@BillMaher @RealTimers Misinformed by NPR about Single Use Plastic Recycling

Sigh.  Bill Maher has given some of my favorite commentaries. But most of his comments about Plastic Recycling are Rubbish.

Here are some fact checks from last Friday's RealTimer claims about plastic recycling... in Bill's most finger wagging self-assured lecturing voice, Mr. Club Random poses as an expert in plastic recycling - something he has done over and over.  Because - I do believe this - he's an environmentalist who cares about the planet. 

But he's making up things about plastic recycling which will certainly lead to people not participating in plastic recycling collections, and he himself is doing more harm than good.

1.  Bill, the 9% of all plastic recycled is not 9% of single use containers. It included cars and electronics and all kinds of other plastic.

2. Bill, most of the "ocean patch" of plastic is vinyl from ships and shipping industry waste, not single use containers.

3. Bill, the people who fly to the USA to inspect bales of plastic scrap, price it, pay for it (more than the value of paper these days), pay truckers to load it onto ships, and then bring it to the plastic factories which have web sites and are licensed by their governments and who pay taxes on it at customs - no, no, no, Bill - they do NOT then throw them in the ocean.

4. Bill, the textiles and other plastic items made out of recycled plastic would otherwise be made out of virgin plastic. And even incredibly weak recycling systems for plastic are obviously better than that.

5. Dear Bill, check out the Oregon DEP study on the lifecycle costs of different types of packaging, learn about forests and mining, and stop making our environmental degradation all about one type of lightweight packaging which happens to make a lot of sense as a lightweight anti-spoilage container.

Bill Maher is partially right about recycling creating moral licensing which may cause overconsumption of natural resources to a degree offsetting the value of the recycling.

But like @BillMaher likes to say about "progress" on social fronts, the progress made in plastic recycling - which started when the Bottle Bill states collected enough PETE to sustain a critical mass of material to invest in it - is not "fake".

What AI Says About This Blog. Kinda Now, Kinda Wow....

 The Good Point Recycling blog (retroworks.blogspot.com), authored by Robin Ingenthron, features a wide range of influential posts focused on ethical electronics recycling and e-waste management. Some of the most popular and influential topics include:

1. Critique of the UNU E-Waste Research Program: One of the more impactful posts challenges the statistics and methodologies used by certain global institutions in the e-waste industry, particularly around how e-waste exports to developing countries are portrayed.

2. Solar Panel Recycling Initiatives: This blog highlights solar panel reuse projects, discussing the complexities of repurposing panels in developing nations and comparing it to historical issues around CRT (cathode ray tube) recycling.

3. Fair Trade Recycling Advocacy: Many posts advocate for "fair trade recycling," arguing that developing countries benefit from access to secondhand electronics, which should be seen as an opportunity for technology transfer rather than a dumping issue.

These posts draw attention due to their deep, often critical analysis of global e-waste practices and the underlying motivations of international organizations involved in e-waste regulation.

For more insights and to explore influential posts on e-waste and electronics recycling, you can visit the blog directly.

Can Anyone Explain the Basel Convention?? Part 3

For years, Basel Convention advocates have been saying it is based on waste externalization - Industrialized nations should not externalize their environmental management to non-industrialized nations.

So true, then.

Today, the Basel Convention Amendment isn't about waste externalization. It is about Industrialized nations internalizing mined raw materials, and parts... keeping strategic materials in country... and preventing Emerging Markets from the "white box computer" path to manufacturing.

Metals internalization money is bigger than waste externalization $.

In Part One, we recognized that no recycling facility or activity, anywhere, is in any way banned by the Basel Convention.  Every facility, every worker, everything continues.  But we segregate the path of trade.  Ibrahim in Niger can burn as many wires as he wants to, so long as those wires are from China, or Africa, or other non-OECD. But he cannot burn USA and EU wires. That is a solution to something psychological, not physical world.

Whether Hong Kong's e-waste facility is the high tech, state of the art, certified, insured and managed $550M EcoPark (above), or the misconstrued "Mr. Lai's Farm" (where Hong Kong EPA ruled that printers were not hazardous waste listed and allowed it to operate... no secrets), Basel Convention is silent.  

It does not say what a recycler can DO... all of Malaysia's permitted plastic recycling facilities operate purely under direction of Malaysia law, not international law.  Basel Convention only distinguishes the nationality (and some say identity) country those companies choose to buy FROM. 

Two countries can agree that a particular recycling trade (plastics or electronics parts harvesting) is legal or not considered "waste"... but Basel Convention says that if one is OECD (Mexico) and the other is non-OECD (e.g. Singapore) that the trade is violating the Convention.  Whether the consumer plastic is perfectly recycled in a plastic molder in Klang Malaysia, or fed to kittens in Switzerland, Basel Convention leaves that up to local authorities. But it has to be OECD plastic being fed to kittens in Switzerland, and only non-OECD plastic can be recycled at the plastic molding plant in Klang, Malaysia. 

It is purely about segregating buyers and sellers, not about defining proper standards!

In Part Two, we looked at how crazy "OECD" is, today, as a measure of a person's capacity to repair or recycle. It was iffy when Basel Convention was adapted, and today is a completely random indication of industrialized economies (what it was intended to represent). Singapore, the second most advanced economy in the world, refuses to become OECD - perhaps because they want to trade with 75% of the world's recycled materials supply rather than 25%.  The chart shows how much of the world's "industrialized" economy is now consuming raw materials in "third world" and "first world" economies (the chart is in dollars - in tonnage of raw materials, the lines have already completely crossed).

The Basel Convention is being abused by non-environmentalist actors simply to restrain trade. The more the "Industrialized" Nations become non-or-in-OECD, the more arbitrary the trade restrictions over those industrialized nations is.

It is broken. Jim Puckett won't let go, but I hope Daniel looks at this chart. China can dump on Africa, Africa can't sell properly manually dismantled e-scrap to Umicore, Africans can only buy third-hand electronics for repair, not secondhand nicer PCs they want to buy from rich places???

For me, Basel Convention should not be a religion. It was great in 1990, but there is nothing good happening for the future in these amendments.  Old stupid white men are screwing it up, and some even want to put repair trade into "Annex Bad".

Can Someone Explain Basel Convention? Part 2

So I just returned from the E-Scrap Conference in Orlando, Florida, held at the Orlando Hilton from September 30 to October 2.  The final session of the conference, moderated by Colin Staub, had 4 panelists.

Jim Puckett, Basel Action Network

Patricia Whiting, Whiting and Daswani Consulting

Craig Boswell, HOBI International (Texas)

Emmanuel Nyaletey, BridgeSolarPower.com 

First, what everyone basically agrees on.  "The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (hereinafter referred to as “the Basel Convention”) was adopted in 1989, in response to a public outcry following the discovery, in the 1980s, in Africa and other parts of the developing world of deposits of toxic wastes imported from abroad." (https://www.basel.int/TheConvention/Overview/History/Overview)

In general, the idea behind the Basel Convention was that industrialized nations shouldn't dump industrial hazardous waste on non-industrialized nations.  We can all agree that makes sense - industry makes money which should be spent on cleaning up the waste those industries make.  

Can Someone Explain Basel To Me?

The only thing that the Basel Convention does is infringe trade in scrap (which was not "waste" when the Convention was first written but later became a concern as a "loophole") between the "rich" (OECD) and "poor" (not OECD) people. 

Bring back the Negro Leagues to Make Recycling Great Again???

Because it certainly allows every Malaysian or Indonesian plastic recycler to buy whatever they want from the 75% of the world that is "not OECD."  The pictures, however sad, do not show anything not explicitly allowed by Basel Convention.

The Convention just advocates that poor people can buy from other poor people, but they cannot buy from rich people. Rich People (OECD) can sell used stuff to other rich people, poor people can recycle stuff from other poor people.

NO ACTIVITY IS CHALLEGED. Only IDENTITIES (nationality) are profiled.

It is purely segregation sold as a moral quality.  And fortunately, the Fair Trade Recycling board member Emmanuel Nyaletey will be on the panel to ask these questions to the audience... next to Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network next Wednesday in Orlando.