E-Steward standards vs. real life. Is this PC a hazardous waste, or a commodity?
1. It's purchased from someone claiming it is fully functional, and you sell it as fully functional, under warranty. Is the documentation that the seller represented it to be fully functional acceptable? If not, how can brand new product be sold without constant re-testing? Doesn't this make brokering illegal?
2. You have a choice to sell to two people. One is a school, a direct end user, with no technical repair or maintenance ability, and no recycling infrastructure. The other is a factory which manages 5,000 units per day, has hundreds of employees, and upgrades all systems to warranty standards. They are ISO14001, ISO9000, and inspected for R2 Recycling standards. Doesn't this standard imply that the first sale is legal and the second is illegal, and isn't that environmentally speaking, a bad decision?
3. Your laptop holds less than 80% of its original new-in-box battery charge. A new battery costs $120. A friend in Egyptian medical school is begging you to sell the laptop to him for $100, saying he understands about the battery, but that he keeps it plugged in the wall most of the time anyway. Should you remove the battery and sell it with no battery (so that if it accidentally comes unplugged from the wall, your friends work is lost)? Or must you buy a $120 battery to make this $100 sale?
I can go on and on. The point is that I was a former regulator, and worked very closely with EPA regulators during the formulation of R2 standards etc. This is real life. You can't just get all frustrated and pass a law to make a poster child go away.
The standard is being embraced by shredding companies who have no dog in the reuse fight, and by planned obsolescence in hindsight companies who want to take used product off the market.
"Focus Material" is not "hazardous waste". It is not the same thing. We discussed this for two years, with expert testimony. ANR now says a working monitor is "hazardous waste" because it has a circuit board - but a toaster has the same circuit board but is not hazardous waste.
Really sad that this is how decisions to move jobs out of Vermont take place.
On and on.
1. It's purchased from someone claiming it is fully functional, and you sell it as fully functional, under warranty. Is the documentation that the seller represented it to be fully functional acceptable? If not, how can brand new product be sold without constant re-testing? Doesn't this make brokering illegal?
2. You have a choice to sell to two people. One is a school, a direct end user, with no technical repair or maintenance ability, and no recycling infrastructure. The other is a factory which manages 5,000 units per day, has hundreds of employees, and upgrades all systems to warranty standards. They are ISO14001, ISO9000, and inspected for R2 Recycling standards. Doesn't this standard imply that the first sale is legal and the second is illegal, and isn't that environmentally speaking, a bad decision?
3. Your laptop holds less than 80% of its original new-in-box battery charge. A new battery costs $120. A friend in Egyptian medical school is begging you to sell the laptop to him for $100, saying he understands about the battery, but that he keeps it plugged in the wall most of the time anyway. Should you remove the battery and sell it with no battery (so that if it accidentally comes unplugged from the wall, your friends work is lost)? Or must you buy a $120 battery to make this $100 sale?
I can go on and on. The point is that I was a former regulator, and worked very closely with EPA regulators during the formulation of R2 standards etc. This is real life. You can't just get all frustrated and pass a law to make a poster child go away.
The standard is being embraced by shredding companies who have no dog in the reuse fight, and by planned obsolescence in hindsight companies who want to take used product off the market.
"Focus Material" is not "hazardous waste". It is not the same thing. We discussed this for two years, with expert testimony. ANR now says a working monitor is "hazardous waste" because it has a circuit board - but a toaster has the same circuit board but is not hazardous waste.
Really sad that this is how decisions to move jobs out of Vermont take place.
On and on.
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