Self Fulfilling E-Waste Prophesy

THE STORY OF E-WASTE

Factory which made monitors sees OEMs leaving their business for new LCD monitor manufacturing capacity opened in northern China.

Factory stays open by buying used USA monitors and completely refurbishing them, like new, in brand new boxes, which (unlike LCDs) are actually affordable to students from the villages.

Villagers start to access internet, getting online at 10X the rate of growth of USA.

Factory demand goes so high that villages start to import all kinds of monitors from the USA, good bad and ugly.  The villages sort out the good ones the factory needs and throw their "e-waste" on the ground (breaking off the copper and plastic for recycling, but nowhere to send the CRT glass).

NGO finds the leftovers on the ground and calls for an end to exports from USA.

Factory realizes they are behind the situation, and tries to buy only the correct monitors from American companies willing to recycle the bad and ugly monitors in the USA.

NGO calls on good e-Steward recyclers to boycott sales to Factory.

Factory goes back and buys from the ewaste villages, which buy mixed good and bad monitors from USA recyclers willing to export.

USA e-Steward recyclers which break good monitors sacrifice income and find it tough to compete with mixed ewaste exporters.

Americans find it hard to pay for recycling at "good" American non-exporters.

NGO calls on legislation to force OEMs to pay for recycling of used monitors.

OEM sees Factory making like-new monitors to compete with them, agrees with NGO to disallow exports to factory.

CBS 60 Minutes finds ewaste on the ground in villages from USA exporters that don't segregate monitors.

NGO, expensive E-Stewards cite 60 minutes.

Factory closes, laying off thousands... who return to work on scrap in the villages.