"ewaste" Command and Control

Reviewing an online copy of the state of Washington's Standard Plan (for E-Waste), I found this paragraph.

O.1  Collectors  

Registered collectors, depending on the types of CEPs collected and their location’s convenience to covered entities, should be able to operate at rates comparable with other collectors with similar characteristics.  Fairness to the Authority and to the collector is heavily dependent upon volume.  For example, a collector that chooses to accept only laptops and computers (no TVs or monitors); receives 200 pounds of CEPs a day; is staffed with one employee for 10 hours per day; and incurs rent and utility expense of $30 per day would realize fixed costs of approximately $130 per day.  The amount required to cover expenses at this collection level would equal $0.65 per pound.  If the collector expanded operations to accept all CEPs; relocated to a more visible area (assuming effective public outreach); and received 1,200 pounds per day, fixed expenses would be covered at only $0.11 per pound.

So you only take laptops, which can be resold at an average of $80 each.  Because you only accepted laptops, no TVs, your overhead (rent, utilities, etc.) per pound is higher.  So you should be paid 65 cents per pound, while someone who breaks their back lugging console TVs (negative -$40) should be paid 11 cents per pound.

This is the same state which made Goodwill Industries, the thrift shop expert, center of all collections - and then penalized them by charging them for every item they reused in the thrift shop.  Goodwill Industries is now twisted into a shredding conglomerate, collecting for destruction only, a total perversion of their brand.

This is sick and twisted.  People who eat only caviar should be paid more than people who eat dry bread?

These 'stewardship' state laws are still young, and if they correct them for common sense quickly they may save the Stewardship label.  But if they circle their wagons and defend every first step, the bloodsuckers who benefit from a program like this will circle their tentacles and it will turn into a Kadafi regime.  Ok, I'm being un-diplomatic.  But no one calls me to ask someone with experience how it should be done, they surround themselves with converts and mistake a conversation with an owner for hands-on experience.  They are led to the slaughter, and the environment bleeds a gurgle from our slashed throat.  I think they are smart people who will realize... too late.  But other bets are on curdled bleating to the marching band.

The lesson here is the same as the California SB20 cancellation clause (the short section requiring CRT tubes recyclers to "break vacuum seal on cathode ray gun").  No regulator in CA recalls writing that extremely technical language, the only intent of which is to destroy reuse value.  Billion dollar companies get involved and want to create "planned obsolescence in hindsight", destroying secondary market value as a perceived competitor to their own future sales.

I hope that my criticism of this "unintended consequence" of e-waste law is not taken personally by state and municipal officials who have embraced "e-waste" legislation.  Most do not realize their role as a cog in the wheel of obosolescence and waste creation.  Some defend OEMs who insist on no reuse, based on the argument that it is "their" product and they are paying for the recycling.   But there are other OEMs who benefit from the lower cost of recycling when reuse is allowed, and those OEMs are forced to pay higher prices as a result of the no-reuse demand of the obsolescence OEMs.   If an OEM wants to pay for the destruction of their own product, they are free to do so, but writing a rule to require us to destroy someone else's product does not seem fair.