ABSTRACT
Jonathan Lese, corporate social responsibility manager at PerkinElmer, a global
technology company developing diagnostics and biomedical products for the
environmental and human health sectors, was facing new challenges in the area
of product end-of-life (EoL) management. As of 2012, PerkinElmer provided main-
tenance services but was not responsible for instrument recovery and EoL manage-
ment in the United States. The situation was different in the European Union, which
in 2002 had enacted legislation mandating product take-back by manufacturers.
While no federal action was expected in the United States in the near future, a
growing number of individual states had enacted laws for product take-back.