Footprints Vs. Fingerprints: Example of Environmental Own Goal (leadfree solder)

 My generation became invested in Recycling before the "Mobro Barge" and garbage crisis (closing of small unlined landfills under RCRA). 

The energy, carbon, environmental harm, habitat depletion, species loss, toxics, everything in mining and petroleum pumping, was the reason to recycle. We made a calculated bargain to put recycling into the waste management business, to benefit from rising landfill costs, but I have argued we lost our way.

Mining and forestry build roads into forests, which expose humanity to #bushmeat trade (illegal poaching). That brings endangered-species-platter to so-called "wet markets", which brings us HIV, AIDS, and Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) through chimp and pangolin and bat hunting.  

FOOTPRINT:  We pierce habitats because we don't recycle enough, and we need the supply of virgin raw materials.

FINGERPRINT: We obsess over our recycling - the costs, the quality, the access - losing site of the fact that recycling has always paid for itself if the cost of mining, forestry, and oil drilling have to pay for themselves as well.

Here's a reminder of our #owngoal, a Midgely-esque policy still championed as environmentally sustainable, which failed to do the math. ROHS, or leadfree solder.

Tin mining in SE Asia was practically extinct by 1980 (a high school friend's dad in Arkansas had lost his job because "bi-metal cans" demanded so little tin by then). We environmentalists re-opened this mining business because we were more obsessed with the quality of our waste than the recycled content and repairability of our electronic devices.

Would you choose packaging that was organic, renewable, non-toxic, reuseable - if the source was baby harp seal pelts? The footprint of killing baby seals seems to trump the value of the "natural" packaging.

The leaded solder used in electronic circuit boards was less brittle and the electronics made with leaded solder were more easily repaired and lasted longer. But more hideous is the footprint of the materials we replaced the leaded solder with.

Lead is one of the most recycled-content metal supplies on earth (thanks to recovery of auto batteries). But to make our "waste" electronics less "toxic", we passed laws to replace the recycled content lead with tin and silver.

Tin and silver are an engineering solution which do make our scrap circuit boards less toxic. The fingerprints on our old electronics are maybe something to be proud of. 

But tin is mined from coral reef islands. And silver mining is the #2 source of mercury pollution (after gold).

This was the subject of some of my first blogs, 2006-2008, before the #collateraldamage of the war on reuse. I was able to recognize #freejoebenson was a victim of #charitableindustrialcomplex, #bigshred, and #plannedobsolescence because I was already watching my fellow environmentalists do incredible harm, and slowly forgetting about the General Mining Act of 1872 and other huge raw material subsidies. I'm writing about it again because I have a few new followers and readers (mostly from Europe). The footprint-fingerprint dilemma, and the #PtolemyCircularEconomy, need more science, economics, and math - and less moral licensing.