Cell Phone E-Waste Update

Less than 48 hours after posting my HTC Evo E-scrap phone (the broken LCD which is still 80% readable), the  ebay bids are up to $130.   That's just $69 less than the new HTC EVO 4G I can get at Sprint, if I upgrade one of the company's older phones.  The replacement LCD, if I do the IFIXIT repair myself, is about $65.  Plus I need tools, shipping, etc.  The ebay method seems to be proving the efficiencies of free-flowing commerce.

But will pollution result?   I have allowed international bidders to place ebay bids on this auction, which was listed for 5 days.  By the end of the week, we may know whether I am to be arrested by Interpol for violating the MPPI Mobile Phone Partnership Initiative.  You might recall it, BAN has publicly stated the white paper MPPI diagram (which calls for non-working parts, like the LCD, to be removed prior to export) not only applies to cell phones, but the text of the Guidance Document actually trumps the Basel Convention Annex IX explicit description of CRTs.



If the Ebay auction is won by someone overseas, I'll update everyone and have photos taken of me putting it in a package.  Then we can decide whether I follow the Gene Greene bill and notify the Hong Kong authorities prior to shipment of the $130++ cell phone, so the buyer can be arrested as well.

Vermont ANR has stated that 'e-waste' must be handled as Universal Waste.  If this is sold for repair, does it remain "ewaste"?   If I collected it and recorded the weight under my UWR manifest, the sold weight will then be missing, but there is no rule requiring me to report on the commodity.  Isn't this a concrete example of why EPA CRT Rule considered, and then rejected, UWR as federal law governing CRTs?

A competitor may want to bid on this phone, hoping to retrieve all of my company's private data, since we are all told that the wiping program I'll run is not to be trusted (as a reason for shredding).  Our competitors may bid the phone up higher than the cost of a new phone, based on their confidence that it's really easy to retrieve wiped (why they spent millions on shredders).

I am just trying to have phun with this fone breakage thing.  My son was really really hoping he'd inherit one of these on my next upgrade.  If he can find another HTC Evo with a bad battery, bad board, power connector, etc., then I can show him the traditional old method - take two broken items and make one good one.  Then I can be arrested for violating child labor laws, as well.

Speaking of children... If I get a record player in our e-waste collection, and it has this record by Danny Kaye, which I listened to as a kid, about the Emporer's New Clothes, should I file some kind of a report?