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.  

NGO Plants Needle in Haystack, Part 1: New Outrageous Claims in #EwasteGate

The news breaking today is that a Seattle NGO, Basel Action Network, is releasing a documentary with PBS about their "watchdog" effort to sabotage LCDs (making them non-repairable) and then track them overseas with GPS transponders.  The first company they have "outed" is Total Reclaim, an E-Steward certified company in their own home of Seattle Washington.

Article at E-Scrap News

Does this sound familiar?  You take electronics which someone wants to reuse, cut wires, and turn it in for reuse and repair.   Someone buys it for repair, and then you accuse them of having shipped it for "primitive" recycling.

#FREEJOEBENSON



BBC Reporter RAPHAEL ROWE cut a wire (thinking export for repair is illegal - should have read Basel Convention Annex IX, B1110 on export for repair of CRT monitors and TVs).

Context:  The Seattle Recycler received about 28.5M lbs of TVs, printers, computers, cell phones - as well as car seats, x-ray machines, and UPS.  The NGO doesn't say that the mass balance is off.  Of the 28.5M lbs, about 28M lbs of garbage-in came back out as baled steel, plastic, non-ferrous metal, and CRT cullet.  What the NGO's methodology is to find a device NOT in demand in the USA (CRTs in 2012 Benson case, smaller flat LCDs this year) but in high demand with overseas repair.  They take one that looks nice, open it and sabotage a wire, then place a tracking device.  When the Recycler has a staff person do sort-for-repair, the GPS is tracked, and the NGO implies that 28 million pounds are in question.

Had the NGO put its GPS tracking device in a random printer or CRT television or Pentium 2 computer, no one has ANYdoubt that Total Reclaim would have long recycled it.  This test is designed to disguise the GPS device in the biggest cherry, the patients who we believe could be saved from the recycling creamatorium.  Then, the NGO uses racist language to describe the "primitive" repair people who make a living by cherry picking luxury clients "waste" for the "good enough" market.

If BAN had put the tracker in a Pentium 2, a printer, a CRT television, virtually anything (aka random sample), they know perfectly well the Recycler would have scrapped it.  They chose the device they did because it has high demand and repair markets overseas, and they tracked it to a place a few miles from where the device was probably originally made... a place with more expertise in the device than anywhere in the world.

Remember, the reason NGO BAN told everyone to be very concerned about the export for repair market is that they told the press 80% was not repaired, but was dumped, in "Digital Dump" or "reuse excuse" language.  But it turned out they were making that up.  And their website still has the same garbage.