Can Anyone Explain the Basel Convention?? Part 3

For years, Basel Convention advocates have been saying it is based on waste externalization - Industrialized nations should not externalize their environmental management to non-industrialized nations.

So true, then.

Today, the Basel Convention Amendment isn't about waste externalization. It is about Industrialized nations internalizing mined raw materials, and parts... keeping strategic materials in country... and preventing Emerging Markets from the "white box computer" path to manufacturing.

Metals internalization money is bigger than waste externalization $.

In Part One, we recognized that no recycling facility or activity, anywhere, is in any way banned by the Basel Convention.  Every facility, every worker, everything continues.  But we segregate the path of trade.  Ibrahim in Niger can burn as many wires as he wants to, so long as those wires are from China, or Africa, or other non-OECD. But he cannot burn USA and EU wires. That is a solution to something psychological, not physical world.

Whether Hong Kong's e-waste facility is the high tech, state of the art, certified, insured and managed $550M EcoPark (above), or the misconstrued "Mr. Lai's Farm" (where Hong Kong EPA ruled that printers were not hazardous waste listed and allowed it to operate... no secrets), Basel Convention is silent.  

It does not say what a recycler can DO... all of Malaysia's permitted plastic recycling facilities operate purely under direction of Malaysia law, not international law.  Basel Convention only distinguishes the nationality (and some say identity) country those companies choose to buy FROM. 

Two countries can agree that a particular recycling trade (plastics or electronics parts harvesting) is legal or not considered "waste"... but Basel Convention says that if one is OECD (Mexico) and the other is non-OECD (e.g. Singapore) that the trade is violating the Convention.  Whether the consumer plastic is perfectly recycled in a plastic molder in Klang Malaysia, or fed to kittens in Switzerland, Basel Convention leaves that up to local authorities. But it has to be OECD plastic being fed to kittens in Switzerland, and only non-OECD plastic can be recycled at the plastic molding plant in Klang, Malaysia. 

It is purely about segregating buyers and sellers, not about defining proper standards!

In Part Two, we looked at how crazy "OECD" is, today, as a measure of a person's capacity to repair or recycle. It was iffy when Basel Convention was adapted, and today is a completely random indication of industrialized economies (what it was intended to represent). Singapore, the second most advanced economy in the world, refuses to become OECD - perhaps because they want to trade with 75% of the world's recycled materials supply rather than 25%.  The chart shows how much of the world's "industrialized" economy is now consuming raw materials in "third world" and "first world" economies (the chart is in dollars - in tonnage of raw materials, the lines have already completely crossed).

The Basel Convention is being abused by non-environmentalist actors simply to restrain trade. The more the "Industrialized" Nations become non-or-in-OECD, the more arbitrary the trade restrictions over those industrialized nations is.

It is broken. Jim Puckett won't let go, but I hope Daniel looks at this chart. China can dump on Africa, Africa can't sell properly manually dismantled e-scrap to Umicore, Africans can only buy third-hand electronics for repair, not secondhand nicer PCs they want to buy from rich places???

For me, Basel Convention should not be a religion. It was great in 1990, but there is nothing good happening for the future in these amendments.  Old stupid white men are screwing it up, and some even want to put repair trade into "Annex Bad".

It also illustrates why the USA doesn't adapt some well-intentioned UN conventions.  The "Conference of Parties" is a bunch of individual APPOINTEES from their nations who listen to a presentation at COP (Conference of Parties) and vote a consensus...

Meaning USA could sign and ratify a convention that says NOT to export something, and a bunch of individual appointees can change or alter what the US ratified to say YES TO exporting something.

The opposite of recycling is not disposal. The opposite of recycling is using raw materials made out of forests, oceans, and mountains.  Recycled content replaces the most polluting and carbon producing activity on planet earth.  Basel Convention enthusiasts don't care whether a computer monitor is made of recycled materials or baby seals. They care only about who the recycled materials are traded between.