Can Someone Explain Basel Convention? Part 2

So I just returned from the E-Scrap Conference in Orlando, Florida, held at the Orlando Hilton from September 30 to October 2.  The final session of the conference, moderated by Colin Staub, had 4 panelists.

Jim Puckett, Basel Action Network

Patricia Whiting, Whiting and Daswani Consulting

Craig Boswell, HOBI International (Texas)

Emmanuel Nyaletey, BridgeSolarPower.com 

First, what everyone basically agrees on.  "The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (hereinafter referred to as “the Basel Convention”) was adopted in 1989, in response to a public outcry following the discovery, in the 1980s, in Africa and other parts of the developing world of deposits of toxic wastes imported from abroad." (https://www.basel.int/TheConvention/Overview/History/Overview)

In general, the idea behind the Basel Convention was that industrialized nations shouldn't dump industrial hazardous waste on non-industrialized nations.  We can all agree that makes sense - industry makes money which should be spent on cleaning up the waste those industries make.  

SERI: Taking a Cut of All Solar Panel Resale. Criminal Racketeering. ANAB? ANSI? Please Help.

Definition:   RACKETEERS OFFER A DECEITFUL SERVICE TO FIX A PROBLEM THAT OTHERWISE WOULDN'T EXIST.

Sustainable Electronics Recycling Institute -Formerly known as "R2 Solutions" - is in criminal racketeering territory nowadays.

They already violated ANSI and ANAB rules with Version 3, as we documented here 3 years ago. Now they are taking something - secondhand solar panels - which they have NEVER shown ANAB or ANSI they have ANY expertise or authority in, and are clearly making their monetary interests (SERI YOUR SALARY) upfront. @2019 Blog on Certification and Racketeering.

Read this. If you are certified by SERI to test solar panels for reuse, you pay them $20lk, it's fine. But if you sell the solar panels to a Solar Panel Expert Wizard - WHO HAS NEVER HEARD OF SERI OR R2 - you can only do so if SERI has issued the Solar Panel Expert Wizard a CERTIFICATE costing $20,000.

This is not allowed unless SERI gets money.

Halloween Statistics: Greenpeace Quit Saving the Whales, Now We Must Save the DataJournalists

Happy Halloween!  This year, I'm going as a very scary statistic.

What do we do when someone with a reputation for caring about the poor, caring about endangered species, etc., uses their reputation to convince the Mainstream Press of a false math account? When they create mainstream story that exaggerates the actual problems - many of which are real - they create what #KirstenLinnenkoper labels "The Plastic Boogeyman" in this month's Recycling International.

Somewhere, deep in our amygdala, English Majors are afraid of math. English majors are more likely to become journalists - or "photojournalists" - than they are to be #datajournalists.  And we are seeing this routine over and over again, as a #CharityIndustrialComplex makes up numbers to scare reporters, who seem at a loss over how to fact-check.

Michal Manas, Baled PETE in Czech Republic, Wikimedia Commons

This year, the #fakestat is "Nine Percent".  Greenpeace snuck their own executive summary onto an otherwise sound piece of plastic recycling research.  And they get mainstream press to report that of all single serve plastic containers sold, only 9% of plastic containers are recycled. The conclusion they allow some reporters to leave with is that only 9% of the plastic in this photo above really gets recycled. At least, I heard reporters say that, and so far, Greenpeace and BAN have yet to correct it.

Nine percent sounds really bad. If you are a city, why even bother to pay for collecting those containers? If you are a resident, why bother putting PETE or HDPE into the blue bin? On NPR's "It's Been A Minute" a few months ago, the panel glibly announced SPECIFICALLY that of what you put into a recycling blue bin, only 9% really gets recycled.

Compare that to Aluminum containers. Putting aside that these stats themselves suffer from "Formal Sector" bias (many aluminum cans get recycled in China and Africa and India, where there is no formal "spreadsheet" to track it), the 9% Greenpeace statistic is awful compared to Aluminum Cans.

"Notably, while the Aluminum Association has reported a 45.2% consumer recycling rate for aluminum cans, the RRS analysis uses 38% as the national baseline to reflect the percentage of aluminum that actually makes it to remelting facilities, after material losses that occur during collection and sorting." 2022 Press Release, Ball Systems and RRS

So they divide recycled aluminum cans by all aluminum cans.

collected in the numerator

divided by cans manufactured in the denominator

The numerator of the Aluminum Statistic are tons of aluminum single serve containers documented to be recycled. (formal sector numbers).  Now, look at the Plastic report calculation, covered in Science.org in 2017... TITLE? 

Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made

"As of 2015, approximately 6300 Mt of plastic waste had been generated, around 9% of which had been recycled, 12% was incinerated, and 79% was accumulated in landfills or the natural environment."  https://lnkd.in/e_wN-t5j

See that? The numerator is plastic recycling - mostly single serve PETE and HDPE containers, though LDPE Film is also legitimately recovered.  All are reclaimed at higher than 9% rates - if we measure it the way aluminum cans are measured.  But if you follow the link to the study, the DENOMINATOR is all plastic ever produced.  Greenpeace divides the captured recycling containers and divides them by bottles PLUS child car seats, underground PVC pipe, auto bumpers, etc.

Recycled bottles in the numerator, divided by ALL PLASTIC EVER PRODUCED

+  + 

 + 

In 2005, a year before I started this Blog, retired Greenpeace Founder Patrick Moore published this in the Miami Herald - the same time BAN and Greenpeace started press releases about "ewaste exports"
http://greenspiritstrategies.com/the-environmental-movement-greens-have-lost-their-way/

Special to the Miami Herald

January 28, 2005

Scare tactics, disinformation go too far

I  am often asked why I broke ranks with Greenpeace after 15 years as a founder and full-time environmental activist. I had my personal reasons, but it was on issues of policy that I found it necessary to move on.

By the mid-1980s, the environmental movement had abandoned science and logic in favor of emotion and sensationalism. I became aware of the emerging concept of sustainable development: balancing environmental, social and economic priorities. Converted to the idea that win-win solutions could be found by bringing all interests together, I made the move from confrontation to consensus.

Since then, I have worked under the banner of Greenspirit to develop an environmental policy platform based on science, logic and the recognition that more than six billion people need to survive and prosper every day of the year. The environmental movement has lost its way, favoring political correctness over factual accuracy, stooping to scare tactics to garner support.

We’re faced with environmental policies that ignore science and result in increased risk to human health and ecology. To borrow from the vernacular, how sick is that?

The Circular Economy of "e-waste" Parts: Opening Our Eyes to Value Added

The European theory of the "circular economy" focuses on the final value of metals, minerals, and petrochemicals. Today I'll try to explain, as succinctly as possible, why this "Ptolemy" circle (stuff revolves around us) wasn't recognized in Emerging Markets.

While researching the CRT Recycling Infrastructure for the Massachusetts DEP's first-in-the-nation statewide e-waste disposal program in 1999, I was told about Dr. Yuzo Takahashi (by Panasonic rep and Japan history buff David Thompson). Dr. Takahashi had published a brief book titled "A Network of Tinkerers: The Advent of the Radio and Television Receiver Industry in Japan."

As a "cross culture" professional (hired by Peace Corps to train incoming Americans in 1986), I found Dr. Takahashi's brief history lesson to make complete sense. Japan's electronics economy - and its imitators to be in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and eventually mainland China - was in one special way COMPLETELY different from USA and Europe. It was a cultural difference.

... and reading about how Asians traded parts and components (readily visible on Alibaba, Exporters.com, RecycleINME, and Recycle.net back in those days) are seen by Asians starts in the Japanese living room.

When a society is building it's devices from components, the value added of the parts is far more important than the scrap value. Most USA and Europeans buy a pre-assembled electronic device sealed in a box and sold under warrantee. That blinded us to the parts and components trade, which is FAR more valuable than raw materials. Like aftermarket car parts, 20% of a scrap device is worth 80% of the money.

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.

German and Vermont Plastic Bans - Go Fund Me a Mountain

So first the headline - Germany takes the initiative to ban all single use plastics by July 2021. It's being applauded and heralded all over Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter. See coverage on ABC News this morning:

Germany bans single-use plastic straws, food containers

Germany is banning the sale of single-use plastic straws, cotton buds and food containers (AP)

Here is a better idea. Support our Fair Trade Recycling Offset plan. I've been talking about it for years, and have now set up a GoFundMe page with a goal of $25,000.  We will then pay for litter collection out of Ghana streets in the weeks before the monsoon rain washes thousands of tons of plastic litter into the ocean we all share.

(Ed. - Originally, FTR's Offset Program was launched specifically for e-waste recovery. We now see ocean-bound plastic as the main target. Our estimate is that it costs $1000 of effort to collect one additional ton of properly sorted plastics from a mature USA recycling program. By contrast the same $1000 would pay to divert ten tons of ocean-bound plastic from Africa's cities, before a monsoon washes that plastic out to sea, where it will cost $10,000 to capture the one ton again).

Vermont's plastic bags are not the problem. Voting to ban the plastic is little more than virtue signalling. Recall where ocean litter comes from.

Plastic recyclers in Tamale, Ghana

2020 GlobalEwaste Statistics Partnership. Fresh Start? Hmmmm

First, let me apologize if I got off on the wrong foot with Dr. Ruediger Kuehr of United Nations University. We were introduced to one another about 15 years ago, through indirect networks (EPA DC contacts etc). He was presented to me as a more moderate voice on the E-Waste Export debate than Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network, or Ted Smith of Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.


That's kind of typical of official reactions when one hysterical account (BAN.org) that "80% of E-Waste exported 80% of the time, and 80% of that is dumped and lost to the circular economy" is questioned sharply by someone (yours truly) who had a certain degree of credibility at the time. Regulators try to find someone at a median between Robin and The Ayatollah of EWaste, and fund them to get at the truth.

Ruediger's been at the receiving end of research funding for over a decade. And he's filled the role of compromise chef, admirably. A compromise between talented tech sector importers, and the bigots who labelled them "primitive recyclers"...

I haven't finished starting the 2020 "Global E-Waste Statistics Partnership" report, "Global EWaste Monitor 2020" yet.  But in the introduction, this paragraph stood out.

"Only 17.4% of this was officially documented as properly collected and recycled."

I see what you did there. It's a very precise statistic, down to the decimal, about what data you have. But it also continues a backhanded European narrative about the so-called "informal" sector (which I call either the Tech Sector or Scrap Sector according to what is happening).

This is #whitesplaining why the Africans I filmed (below) are not to be trusted. If they were trusted, the charitable industrial complex funding might grind to a halt.

Ethical Gravity 3: Circular Economy Does Not Orbit Us, Tiger

Environmental Ethics Revolves Around Generations Yet To Be Born.

Primum Non Nocere to the future.

Long theme of this blog is how human behavior can be explained, or motivated by, Darwin's theory of evolution. Steven Pinker's psychology books owe a lot more to Darwin than to Freud.

We can see an animal - rat, beaver, guinea fowl, tiger - knows something is "about them".  Our brains are mapped the same way.

- Greed, Desire. 

- Fear, Revulsion. 

- Anger, Rage- Caring, Nurture.

The first three are called "Aversion Reactions".

I suffer everything - desire, fear, and anger - for the Tiger.

https://unsplash.com/photos/gRB4Euk4BYQ

“The Circular Economy Doesn’t Revolve Around Us”

Testimony Submitted July 4, 2019

Testimony to the UK Parliament, House of Commons, Environmental Audit Committee.

via Fair Trade Recycling (WR3A.org)

The environmental WEEE policies supported by the UK mean well. They mean fabulously well. When I met Lord Chris Smith at a public meeting to launch INTERPOL’s “Project Eden”, I could see the passion towards ending what was thought to be the scourge of the planet - E-Waste exports.

The UK had made the export (except for “fully functional”) used electronics a crime.  African, Asian and Latin American tech sector importers were labelled “waste tourists”. The House of Commons reported in 2012 that the exported secondhand computers represented a “strategic mineral” interest, and that whether or not they were reused (the HOC report did, to its credit, cast doubt on the “80% waste” statistic proclaimed by Lord Chris Smith), that the UK’s industrial sector needed the metals to remain in the UK’s “circular economy”.

Reversing Environmental Racism: Owning Your Stereotypes and Profiles

We are on the verge of turning the page on EuroCentric #CircularEconomy.  Several professionals in the European Union (and UK) have understood that Copernicus and Galileo were right, and the sustainable economy does not "revolve around" the OECD.

Five years after the IERC conference gave an Award to Jim Puckett of BAN for his "pioneering and breathless work to prevent the globalization" of used electronics management, the conference has invited Emmanuel Eric Nyalete - a native Ghanaian, Georgia Tech Coder, and former reuse department head at Good Point Recycling - to address the conference and tell them about Ghana's imports from the Tech Sector's point of view.



How did we get here?  And why did it take ten years (since publication of Greenpeace's report on Agbogbloshie) to get experts like Emmanuel, Grace Akese (of MUN), Jenna Burrell, Josh Lepawsky, and others to the podium?  And is it possible that Europe will actually contribute financially to welcome Africa's Tech Sector back to the table, and partner with them to make the world better for future generations of all races, languages, and creeds?