WR3A 2011 Annual Meeting: Protect "E-Waste" Babies in the Bathwater

WR3A is  Keeping Recycling Exports Good for Environment, Democracy




As I prepare for the industries most important Electronics Recycling Events - the EScrap 2011 Conference (next week in Orlando, Florida), I'm preparing WR3A's most significant updates for the past year.

The WR3A Annual Meeting will be held at the Omni, in the Olympic Room, at 7:30-8:30 AM on Wednesday, October 5.  The chief item is how to bring overseas WR3A members "under the tent", to encourage partnerships with sister organizations in Malaysia, Europe, Africa, and Latin America.  If the organization doesn't have the financial stamina to "certify" overseas buyers (not even E-Stewards, TechSoup Global, or R2 have really come up with a solution affordable monitoring of faraway buyers), how do we protect the innocent without attracting "fast friends" among the reckless?

I hope everyone attending or visiting our booth has seen the three biggest WR3A recognitions of the past 6 months:

• German 3SAT Television Interview

• Recycling International and Scrap magazine

• Motherboard Article

WR3A has several CASE STUDIES to offer, including a presentation to APEC.  We have had visitors from El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Angola, Ghana, China, Chile, Holland, and Mexico in the past year.  We have very exciting news coming about cooperation with institutions of higher learning, willing to dig down and study the export trade, and find numbers.  The most important part of hospital "triage" is to get HEALTHY patients out of the emergency room, and a number of "export emergencies" may turn out to be just that - healthy recycling relationships without any pollution or damage... we need to get those off the "enforcement table" and concentrate on improving and reforming wherever the "externalization" - of harm or of value - is unhealthy.

Prior to last year's EScrap Conference, we had coverage in Discovery, Sacramento Bee, Recycling Today, E-Scrap News, USA Today, Time, PBS, NPR, etc.    Fair Trade Recycling is a concept whose time has come.  WR3A is not just about repeating slogans and selling a solution for money.  This is about alter-globalization, fair trade, and seeing people worldwide for what they CAN do, not just for what they CANNOT do.  Join us at the annual meeting with the other Monkeys running our environmental zoo.