A recent filing from a carmakers group protesting a recent decision in Maine on whether they had to pay a bounty to remove mercury switches from junked vehicles was expected. And as expected, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers opposed Magistrate Judge Margaret Kravchuck’s ruling based on arguments that essentially reassert the reasons that didn’t seem to persuade the judge even slightly. But as a review of the case heads to U.S. District Court, two issues surrounding it should be of interest to Maine.

First, it is important to understand that the alliance isn’t questioning the harm these mercury switches can do if they are improperly handled and the mercury, a neurotoxin that presents a range of other dangers to the environment, is released. Its members, as required by law, stopped using this type of switch this year and the alliance doesn’t doubt the need for collecting the switches out of old cars as they are recycled. However, it opposes, specifically, four aspects of Maine’s first-in-the-nation collection program: a ban on dealerships serving as collection points; a requirement that the manufacturers establish consolidation facilities; the requirement that the manufacturers pay at least $1 per switch collected; and a prohibition against requiring a separation of switches by manufacturer. The alliance argued succinctly in its objection to the court decision, “All that is at issue is the question of who pays, a question that has little relationship to the stated legislative goal and no relationship to any environmental purpose.”

But of course it does, because Maine’s interest is in seeing the program work, and to do that it must be simple and it must be paid for. That means a program such as one that has only a couple of consolidation points, uses vehicle identification numbers to determine how much each manufacturer must pay rather than requiring scrap dealers to separate into many hazardous waste buckets switches from each manufacturer, and an adequate bounty to cover the costs of removal. The alliance may have legal points to make in its extensive arguments concerning the Commerce Clause, which it argues Maine is violating, but what it really needs to be is more persuasive in suggesting an alternative collection process.

With the Commerce Clause in mind, the alliance seems emotionally wounded by the idea that Maine would require its members to help cover the cost of safely dismantling part of its product once it has reached the end of its useful life. The act, its says, “requires out-of-state manufacturers of products that are neither defective nor inherently dangerous (and that were sold lawfully) to pay local scrap yards not to act unlawfully and irresponsibly when they go about their business of dismantling motor vehicles.”

The payments are not made so that scrap yards act lawfully but because there is a cost to acting lawfully and the Legislature determined the manufacturers should bear it, knowing fully that these costs, small as they are, may be passed on to consumers. But the alliance raises a larger question of what responsibility manufacturers have to ensure that their products are safely handled once they are no longer being used. Should a tire company rather than consumers directly be forced to pay for the safe storage and recycling of worn tires? Should an environmental group be required to collect unused pledge cards rather than forcing municipal recycling budgets to cover the cost?

The Legislature debates these issues of environmental responsibility individually, but it ought to discuss the broader implications of its policy and how it might be logically carried out. And if they think they got pressure from the car lobby on the buck-a-switch debate, they would quickly learn that all kinds of manufacturers would be intensely interested in hearing how lawmakers decide who is responsible for taking care of the cast-off goods everyone contributes to the ever-growing waste stream.