WSJ Best Writer - John Fialka

John Fialka of the Wall Street Journal was usually spot on. He was the best environmental journalist I know of, and I hope he'll publish from time to time from retirement.

He wrote on the need to change the General Mining Act of 1872 in 2007, before a hint that the 137 year old law was overdue for an end to mining subsidies.

He broke the story on USA Mercury "recycling" in April 2006 (exporting what we recover from lamps to alleuvial gold miners in Congo and Amazon river basins).

John Fialka is to environmental science what Alanis Morrisette is to love songs.

John Fialko retired, and leaves a huge hole in the environmental movement.

Western Medecine is probably the best in the world, but the origins of health science were in alchemy... western medical practices went through some strange scatalogical obsessions early on (feeding mercury to King Edward to improve his bowel movements), but what saved it was dialectic, honest confrontation, competition and challenge.

Progress in environmental health faces the same scatalogical challenges - witness USA's obsession with recycling standards (under RCRA) as compared with virgin ore mining (under Superfund). John was a writer I always looked forward to reading, I knew he would improve me as an environmentalist.

E-Waste Recycling Legislation. Re-Boot!!

Ok, start over with a blank piece of paper. What are the needs for good ewaste or electronics recycling policy? We have had waste bans (putting fees on users at point of recycling), advance recycling fees (ARFs charge for recycling at point of purchase), and several varieties of "stewardship" (requiring manufacturers to pay, either as a percentage of what comes in to recycling centers, or as a percentage of what is sold out).

First define the needs:

1) Wide consumer access to recycling in a timely manner.

This is where complicated systems really fail, because they take so long to pass. States like Vermont, which have voluntary programs and do not even have a waste ban firmly declared, have higher recovery per capita during the past decade than states like Minnesota, which debated and tinkered for most of the decade. Minnesota apparently had a higher diversion per capita in 2008 (reportedly including 2007 tonnage, old CPU scrap, prepurchased 2009 tonnage). But even if research into the numbers turns out that it was the same material in pounds per capita, Vermont can't be expected to meet MN if it has been taking console TVs out of the waste stream since 2001, while Minnesotans left them in the basement.

For timely manner, KISS. But now that the Stewardship legislation has momentum behind it in some states, it may be the fastest way to kick start a state that hasn't started yet. Or "whatever will pass, do something NOW." States like VT and MA got farther simply because they got a head start. Some Stewardship advocates repeatedly state that one-time collections, like big free events and all material being collected in one year, demonstrate higher recovery rates. This is a mathematical and logical fallacy. If you stay away from the dentist for 8 years, and then have 3x more cavities filled in one year than anyone else, you are not the expert in dental policy.

2) Affordable

This will connect directly to #3, hierarchy. There is a limited amount of environmental dollars in the total economy. China demonstrated the ineffectiveness of creating one super-eco-city, spending all of its money on a super environmental place, rather than making modest improvements at all the other cities. If you spend all your money on waste disposal, you may come up short for carbon abatement or water quality. The degree to which the Free Market is fighting you, you really need to look at where the bad subsidy is and attack it, because just fighting fire with dollars may be destroying some efficiency you didn't consider. See below.

3) Hierarchy of reduce, reuse, recycle.

Waste bans, stewardship advocates argue, recycle but do not reduce. But the states held as models have all demonstrably hurt the hierarchy, almost without exception.

CA
ME
MN
WA
OR

The Stewardship people mistakenly think that Manufacturers caused the obsolescence, and that takeback models will result in reduction. The manufacturers do cause waste - by insisting in every state above that reuse programs be ineligible or illegal. These states all saw reuse of computer equipment fall exponentially when their bills passed!

The manufacturers are not evil but they have a conflict of interest in the management of used equipment, especially PCs and cartridges, when white box manufacturing has had the highest rate market share growth than any other brand including Acer and Lenovo... which were themselves white box manufacturers ten years ago that grew into brands.

Crushing up useful and refurbishable equipment costs the system money. In a state like Vermont, my company has to satisfy client by client, town by town, city by city. If we miscalculate and don't service a client, we lose them. But in a stewardship state, a small number of manufacturers (some of whom actually band together - see MRM) choose which recycler or community they will buy their "share" of tonnage from. And they tend not to like companies that emphasize reuse.

4) What about reduction?

Well, first most manufacturers didn't manufacture the CRT or display devices. Those were contracted out, just as recycling is. The theory that they will design materials differently works with placebo legislation... they arent' going to change the manufacturing because of Vermont, let Europe do that.

What did cause the obsolescence that is supposed to be fixed?

- Mining subsidies keep copper, aluminum, gold, palladium, etc. cheap to make new electronics from (and make recycling more expensive in comparison).
- Microsoft. Vista killed the P3, XP killed the P2. MS controls the utilization of chips from Moore's law. And arguably, software OS would be a simpler thing to attach stewardship fees to.
- FCC. When they stopped analog TV broadcasts, THAT is what made the TVs obsolete, NOT lack of foresight by Sony, Sharp, Toshiba and Panasonic.

Conclusion:

The right legislation will be a holistic environmental policy which will share recycling costs between consumers, government, and manufacturers. When they all split the costs, they tend to agree more on the best use of funds. And I would add mining and raw material companies, I don't know why BHP Billiton and Xstrata are not in the discussion (multi-billion dollar mining conglomerates which do not share royalties or legacy Superfund liabilities with government).

The correct legislation would create a Fund for state contracts, similar to the ARF in CA or the Clean Environment Fund for bottle deposits in MA. The fund would be contributed to by manufacturers per market share, but also by mining royalties, software operating system royalties, export container taxes, analog bandwidth auctions.

The states would bid out contracts, like CA and MA do, but those contracts wouldn't divide up transportation and collector and processor money. Put the value on the processing, and the processors will compete for transportation. If you allow processors to reuse and practice Fair Trade Recycling exports, the cost of the processing will go down, and the Fund can get raided someday to fix health care or something. That's always thrown at me as a reason AGAINST having a contract fund, but the alternative is that the "recycling" fund gets spent on stupider and stupider and expensiver and expensiver slices of the waste stream.

CRT Glass End Market Audits: Yuma continued

I spent a long time with VP of Dlubak today, going over our planned trial of CRT glass fines we would take back to the smelter in Mexico. I also apologized for the delay in shipping our bare CRTs there, but I knew they were in no hurry for our small quantities.

The EPA enforcement paperwork was a terrific tool for us to use and translate into Spanish - had it not come out, we might have made some of the same mistakes with gaylord labelling, and commingling glass types (since the smelter doesn't care, it would be easy for us not to care. For that matter, Dlubak prepares mixes of glass according to smelter purchase orders).

The main thing people need to understand is that beating up on Dlubak over a minor fine is a case of "the perfect being the enemy of the good." An Arizona blogger announced Dlubak was shipping the glass to the Philippines (Nope.), Jim Puckett is quoted as saying there is a lot of cadmium in the glass (some very rare 1960s color TV tubes used cadmium to make yellows, and BAN.org was citing a US Navy CRT built in the 1950s as their information source on cadmium). I was alarmed to see California companies pushing Dlubak under the bus, implying they are shocked to see lead silica in a pile.

The fact is that the CRT Glass Test is the single best indicator of whether an electronics company is shipping toxic waste overseas. The bad CRTs that cannot be reused or repaired are the biggest cost to an electronics recycler, and the companies like Dlubak and Videocon and CRT Processors, which are tackling that expensive material, need to be protected and thanked. They are not in the business of covering up for exporters who avoid the cost of CRT glass washing and processing, they are the ones who can tell you if a company (like mine) really is paying them $150k per year to manage the bad CRTs (we do).

BAN and my company (before WR3A.org was formed) released a joint paper employing the CRT Glass Test, and it has been embraced by EPA, by California CRRA, and others as providing an easy way to certify your electronics recycler is really recycling. We cannot do this without companies like Dlubak.

So keep abreast of how Dlubak reforms and corrects the mistakes identified in the EPA enforcement. But don't throw them under the bus. As I told Popular Mechanics in my most famous geeky interview last year, the CRT glass processors are the hardest working companies in the e-scrap business. They are NOT managing "e-waste". eWaste is what happens if you throw it away and it DOESN'T get recycled. These are the good guys.
CRTGlassTest_RetroworksDueDiligence

BAN could have pointed out that their own 2004 Study (done with me) demonstrated the critical importance Dlubak plays in the recycling chain. Instead, they added to the hysteria in interviews about the pile. Mining produces piles of lead and silica 100 times the size of Yuma's, and leave a scarred mountainside 1000 times larger. Recycling is good.

Ban Crt Glass Test 2004

Memories of what you did

For some people, I guess, reflecting back on your life means remembering your memories. If you have good memories, you enjoy them. Hedonistically, I guess. You are, right now, enjoying the memory of what you did then. I guess serial rapists and criminals returning to the scene of the crime subscribe to this. People who read this may find that sad, but saying it is probably true of other people isn't the same as being cynical.

For other people, memory is kind of junk mail thing. I mean, if you don't open your mail for 15 years, you can pretty safely throw it into the recycling bin with the other "direct mail" recycling. So recalling your memories of 15 years ago isn't any more useful than opening mail of that decade. People who read this may find that sad, but saying it is probably true of other people isn't the same as being cynical.

Me, I operate based on my actions being real, frozen in time. This is very similar to those who say God is seeing everything we do, and I have more in common, morally, with those "God-fearing" people.

But the reality of my past actions is something different to explain to my children than all-seeing, all-knowing, third party judges.

I thought of this while watching clouds overhead tonight in Middlebury. I saw the clouds (not rainy, but cumulous, nearly-rainy). And the farther away they were towards the horizon, the different they looked. But you could see that someone standing 20 miles away, looking up, would see a similar sight to that I saw looking up in Middlebury.

If that person was 2 years ago, looking up might be to them what remembering, or looking at the clouds from afar, is today.

This probably belongs on my other blog. But I believe that the things I do are forever, they may recede in perspective, but a dinosaur whose fossil is never found is as real as a dinosaur plaster skeleton in Chicago O'Hare. It is the only meaningful way to live, as every action you take now never disappears, it is as real as a stone that may or may not become a diamond.

"He goes down to the park and warms his feet."

CRT Glass and Stewardship

"All my life's a circle. Sunrise and sundown. Moon rolls through the nightime, til the daybreak comes around. All my life's a circle, I can't tell you why. Seasons spinning 'round again, years keep rolling by." - Harry Chapin

To paraphrase, "All my life's a cycle". Here is news about BAN's complaint about a big pile of CRT Glass in Yuma, AZ. CBS local news keeps covering it as an outrage.

The pile is in Arizona, a mining state, and was originally allowed just as mined lead and mined silica would be allowed, under the General Mining Act of 1872. Admittedly a terrible standard, but the AZ DEQ applied the same standard to recycling (secondary material) and mining (primary lead).

The company, Dlubak Glass, is one of a handful which allowed USA companies to pass the "CRT Glass Test", which we created, and which was endorsed by BAN in 2004. Basically, it says if you are skipping the most expensive recycling process - domestic labor and insurance to process the bad CRT tubes - you are likely the source of the junk CRTs sent overseas.

Our company opened a Mexican maquila operation to demanufacture TVs, coverage below (Las Chicas Bravas). My biggest concern before opening the plant was that the CRT glass not accumulate and be unaccounted for. We do NOT want a letter like this enforcement documentation on Dlubak, as filed by the AZ DEQ.
DlubakNotice2009s

We have a smelter in Mexico taking the glass, but also were encouraged when Samsung began taking the CRT glass for glass-to-glass recycling. Meanwhile, we sent our own VT CRTs to Electronicycle, which was purchased by ERI of Fresno in 2007. ERI is a big Pledge Signer, E-Steward, etc., so we figured we are well covered under that banner.

ERI sent CRT glass to Samsung (the PO we originally opened) and to Dlubak. BAN decided Samsung cannot wash the glass in Malaysia, complained to the Malaysia EPA, and the Samsung import permit was cancelled. That left Dlubak and Mexico.

Now BAN is criticizing Dlubak, and implicitly, ERI, for accumulating the CRT glass.

They don't want it sent to Samsung to make CRTs out of. They don't want shippable quantities prepared as mined silica in AZ. Now our Mexico smelter is getting nervous, will they be the next company attacked? We may lose our purchase order, which we were going to fill... as a test sample... from Yuma.

Now what? This is going to make CRT recycling even more expensive for municipal governments, which will cause legislation to pass mandating manufacturers take the cost, and pass it back to consumers. As part of the bargain, the manufacturers will incorporate anti-reuse (anti-gray market) provisions and erect protectionist sales rules to keep new TV and PC manufacturers out. The cost will be passed to the American consumer. And the recycling costs will make mining more attractive. Remember mining? The source of lead piles all over the west, which bankrupted Superfund?

Meanwhile, this drives the e-waste export business underground, like the war on drugs. I feel like a parent environmentalist surrounded by too many children environmentalists running around with sharp objects.

Listen, they are signing a song of their own...

"The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good!"
"The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good!"
"The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good!"

(sung to the universal tune, "nyah, nyah, nyah-nyah, nyah"

PBS - Retroworks de Mexico and Vermont

Wow, our Vermont and Mexico ewaste (एवास्ते) recycling has so much traction. It is very difficult to get ANYTHING started, or financed, in this economy. But the moral support we are getting is incredible. Here is the latest, none other than PBS, coverage of fair trade and responsible e-waste practices.


(बी रेकुएस्ट, रेपोस्तेद)

Womens' rights in Mexico, jobs in Vermont, responsible recycling. Sometimes I think I care about this project and business too much. Entrepreneurism is both a hobby and a lifestyle, so everything you make goes right back into it.

लेगल, एथिकल, Fair Trade of ewaste is a moral imperative। ऐ-वास्ते रेच्य्क्लिंग

Doggie surcharge

Waste firms put fuel surcharges onto bills. Good Point Recycling has a big unpaid bill from a major former client who resells Apple products.

If you are a client and see a fee of $23.50 on your next invoice, it's a "doggie fee". We need 1,000 of these to close out the bill.