Primitive Backyard E-waste Image Pollution

A couple of days ago, I had another long interiew with a reporter.  She was trying to figure out how the pictures she saw on 60 Minutes Wasteland fit with the picture I was trying to paint of "Fair Trade Recycling".  At one point, in frustration, she asked if everyone was just supposed to constantly tour their service providers, playing cat and mouse whether something bad was happening?  That's what her local supplier had done visiting Good Point Recycling, and that's what I had done (showing photos) in Mexico, Egypt, etc.

It's a legitimate concern.  I've written about how misleading even photographic evidence can be.  I supply statistics and records of our reuse and recycling, but people ask how do I know it's true when it goes overseas.

It would have been very easy to just tell the reporter "We don't Export", or "no intact units"... that we are the good white men, who do not dump upon the primitives.  It is much harder to defend the small portion we do export, and to do so without declaring "open season" for other competitors to export "toxics along for the ride".  In that context, I don't blame companies who pledge not to export but do, and it is frustrating when "fans" of this blog are complained about by folks overseas as being junk-along-for-the-ride shippers.


The foundation of the reporter's concerns are the following "mistakes" (untruths).

1. Most of the waste shown burned in China came from wealthy nations.  FALSE
2. 80% the "e-waste" recycling in the USA is shipped as unsorted waste. FALSE
3. Most of the proper recycling operations in Asia are "tidy little fascades" which cover up the truth, which is #1 and #2 above. FALSE
4. Most of the people employed by the export market are primitive wire burning people who will be better off if we simply export less and shred more.  FALSE
5. Donations to people who show pictures of children on scrap piles benefit the children and their families a) more than trading clean material with them, or b) at all.  FALSE
   There's another word for "untruth" or "mistake" when it's repeated, or corrections are ignored.

Companies like mine have benefitted tremendously from the story that we are special, and that all our competitors are doing bad things.   Clients come to visit our plant, and they assume that most recyclers fit the ugly descriptions above, and they are grateful and complimentary of the work that we do.   Many in my business simply thank the Watchdogs for exaggerating the situation, and suggest I do the same.  Le blanc est bon.

But when even the small percentage we ship to Las Chicas Bravas, or to our manufacturer-takeback programs in Asia, or our shipments to Egypt are questioned, I cannot in good conscience pretend we don't do business there, nor am I morally capable of feeling ashamed.   I realize that even the kudos we receive are based in no small part on clownish portrayals of geeks of color.

For these reasons, everyone got together and met with USA EPA's designated driver to form a consensus around "R2" certification.   And while I'm disgruntled about some of the things written into the R2 standards, it is a living document which can change according to supply, demand, and a rapidly changing marketplace, unlike regulations or state laws.

My experience as a regulator taught me that politicians are sensitive to what reporters write, and regulators are sensitive to what politicians ask... so taking the time to deal with the reporter is essential.  If people like me, in the business, simply dish out a sound bite or refer the reporter to a ten year old picture of a kid sitting on a pile of 20-year old scrap, we wind up with regulations written by shredding companies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/12/ethiopia-computer-virus

Giving a reporter a long story is like brain surgery with words.   They have an image in their heads, burned in, and they have a thousand other things they have to report on and be experts on.   Just learning the words "CRT glass cullet" is a path into the swamp for many mainstream journalists.  But if their image of Africa is from a TinTin comic, it is morally imperative to correct that image, and environmentalists who depict primitive backyard conditions a few miles away from the factory which makes every android, iphone, ipod, kindle, etc., is to me like turning my eyes from a technophobe lynching.  It is true that malaria and AIDS are viruses in Africa... but it is also true that Geeks of Color face computer viruses, and for a reporter these seem incongruent.

It's tiring, footnoting the facts over and over again.  It's tempting to offer the easy answer, "we don't export". But a prohibition on exports leads to more mining, to more harm overseas, less internet access, etc.   An export ban tries to pull the shades on the recycling slumdogs, pretend they aren't there.   As someone who exports only 22% of material as intact for reuse, I despise the people who ship junk, but also the daily raised eyebrows.  Fair Trade Recycling is a darn good attempt, and trying to bring the Watchdogs into the California Compromise (to get them to export even better product, rather than "no intact unit") was a very legitimate attempt to bend over backwards.  The company which spoke to them by skype got a call from their nation's EPA 10 days later. 

Al Franken's book, Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them) has is an interesting segment when he is discussing whether calling something a lie is an ad hominem attack on the person who told the lie.   I tend to agree with Al, that if you give the person promoting the lie ample chance to retract the lie or back it up and demonstrate it not to be a lie, that it is not an "ad hominem" attack.  

The Lies are numbered 1-5 above.  If no one is willing to contradict me on it or to discuss it civilly, then What Am I Supposed To Write About?  "We don't have time to discuss it, we are very busy trying to protect the Chinese peasants".  Please!  "We were just about to return your message of 2 months ago and then someone pointed out that you said we told a lie on your blog, that's an attack and we don't respond to attackers".  Puh-lease.  Talk to someone else then.   I have plenty of people who agree with me or are at least open minded about this. 

A professional mediator was hired by EPA to listen to both sides, resulting in the R2 Responsible Recycling standard.

Oh, right, here is how a non-ad-hominem advocate describes that process.  It describes how as an R2 certified recycler, I will be using prison labor, exporting pollutants, refusing to provide documentation on end markets, etc.    You can find lies 1-5 on the same website.

Here is a blank page for the groups who are attacking my friends in Asia and Africa and Latin America to explain whether 1-5 are the truth, or whether they deny ever having said them, or to say Robin is making this up and no reporter or e-waste generator thinks (1-5).  (Or they can use the comment button):

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