PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN? Brownwashing Hong Kong Moon Shot, NGO #Ewaste Mistake of Decade

As multiple reporters recited from the press releases from MIT Senseable City and Basel Action Network this year, we heard descriptions of Hong Kong's New Territories, Yuen Long, and Tin Shui Wai in particular, which were familiar to people who went to high school 2-3 decades ago.

"Rice Paddy".  "Primitive".  "Child Labor."

But they missed the largest, most modern E-Waste processing facility ever seen on earth.  This is an example of "brownwashing", the equal and opposite of "greenwashing".

WEEETRF stands for "Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Treatment and Recycling Facility"

MIT's central claim is that the GPS Tracking Devices revealed "Previously Unknown" things about the used electronics trade.   And they found "mistakes made" by R2 and E-Steward certified companies.

But the biggest "previously unknown" is still unreported.

Two years ago, the Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department (EPA) launched a "moon shot."  And Basel Action Network didn't just miss it.  THEY HID IT.  #brownwashing



But they had to say something about it... something in small print.  Actually this just describes the $45M of the investment, they didn't actually mention the $550M WEEETRF next door.





How is this NOT THE PBS HEADLINE?  NGO went to huge lengths to hide perhaps the largest e-waste recycling facility on the planet, led everyone to a puny junkyard as "representative of hundreds of similar dumps" (really?) in Hong Kong ... a statement they have to make because there's no significant truck traffic, nothing approximating the volumes BAN says are going there (the Agbogbloshie problem).  But they track stuff to the WEEETRF and to end users of repaired devices in Tin Shui Wai, and when I call them out... they attack ME?

Previously Unknown, or Continuously Unknown?

ED NOTE:  THIS IS NOT A DEVICE GOOD POINT RECYCLING OF VERMONT TOUCHED, EXPORTED, HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH.   We obtained the data from a third party.  BAN made a false statement that we are representing this as some kind of an "alibi" for a device that Vermont had something to do with.   We didn't export anything at all, and the device shown above was managed on the West Coast.

Q: Are Millions of Tons of Western "e-Waste" Dumped in Agbogblshie, Ghana?

No.

There is more and more "e-waste" in Africa.  But the West (Europe and USA) are exporting fewer and fewer containers of used electronics.   The implication is obvious... used electronics DID work for 5-15 years after they were imported - Africans are finally replacing TVs and computers they imported more than a decade ago.

There is no big story here, other than the fake news was faked and Joe Benson is in jail because of it.

More African city households have had multiple televisions since the 1990s.  But the "sources" for the foreign dumping claim have all dried up.

John Henry:  "Where did that @#$% statistic go?"

Containers of used equipment being imported into Ghana's port (Tema, not Accra) are not going directly to the Agbogbloshie scrap yard. That can be disproved from any editor's desktop, or by looking carefully at photos purporting to show it.

And there is no evidence of widespread violations of international law.  15% waste is the margin of accidental breakage, electrostatic discharge, human error, etc., and it's as likely (or more likely) to come from brand new product lots as from used.

The discussion is not about what happens to used electronic scrap.  This is about is how to feel about people, and how those feelings promote a political agenda with multiple stakeholders, winners and losers.

How to feel about poor people, how to feel about non-profits, how to feel about ourselves when we consume more goods, how to feel about ourselves as do-gooders and non-profit founders..?  That's far more interesting than which type of video display (used CRT or new LCD) an African with $3,000 annual income should invest in.

[Addendum 6/23/2015 - After forced evictions begin, Discard Studies essay by J. Lepawsky and G. Akese explains history and land politics]

TV Industry Forecasts and Retrospective

I know that recycling is a science.  I learned about paper making from paper engineers, and if you don't know how paper is made you won't be a good recycler.  We made a big mistake in 1992 promoting recycled content in writing paper when we could have first maximized it in toilet paper.  That was just a money mistake, it was wasteful to cut down trees to make toilet paper (making fibers shorter) when the main challenge to recycled writing paper was that the fibers were too short to make quality writing paper....  One part passion and two parts study has been a good recipe for this environmentalist.

Since I took the "special assignment" of CRT Consultant for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental  Protection in 1998 (a queer public management option where you accept a "demotion" and get 3 days per week and a $11K salary increase), I've been learning about display devices.  Still a very "visual" technology, like writing paper.  But very high tech and "science-y", as Colbert might say.

I'm really good at these now.  I read industry magazines, some translated from Chinese or Japanese, and I follow what is going on.  This keeps me from chasing a "today's price" on, say, used LCDs, or allows me to sell my stocks of display devices short when the market is turning.   And the market has been turning the wrong direction on display device pricing for the past 3 years.


Last year was good for cell phones and pads, and therefore for small "touchscreen" display makers.  But it's been a real tough time for big TV screens.  CRT manufacturing may actually outlive Plasma Display screens, and few Americans would have predicted how long they stayed valuable.  But there's an end in sight.

The large drop in volume is due to decreased TV shipments into Japan, down from 19.8 million units in 2011 to just 7.5 million units in 2012, following the end of government subsidies for eco-friendly consumer electronics. Not counting Japan, global TV shipments are set to remain broadly the same in 2012, with growth in developing TV markets like Latin America and the Middle East-Africa offset by the small decline in North America and Europe.

Meanwhile, shipments this year of legacy cathode ray tube televisions (CRT TVs) and plasma display panel televisions (PDP TVs) will continue to fall precipitously. CRT TV volumes will slide from 25.5 million in 2011 to 15.8 million this year, while PDP TV shipments will retreat to 8.9 million in 2012, down from 13.9 million last year.

Growth will return to the television market in 2014. Once this stabilization occurs, the year 2015 will see global shipments return to growth, and sales will rise in countries such as Brazil, India and Indonesia.

The one prediction I've made about the sale potential for used CRTs has been this:   The last new CRT will be made before the last used CRT is resold.   Now, because of Communist Party Chinese (aka Military owned factories) investment in CRTs, they have been produced quite stubbornly and at a probable loss.  But the adage about the "last used sale" beating the last new sale is still true.

Two More Controversial Electronics Recycling Practices, Part 2

If we examine the practices for LCDs which require repair or disassembly, on line, we find two things:

1. Importance of using a "certified recycler"
2. Toxic properties in the LCD CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent lamps contain minute amounts of highly toxic mercury phosphors)

However, you find next to nothing about what "process" is actually being "certified" to occur.   Shredding?  Retort?  Safe handling?  Packaging?   Lots of "white man ju-ju words" and very few VERBS.

• Fair Trade Recycling Intern Adelaide Rivereau has written about the step-by-step process that happens in MY company.
• IFIXIT.org has a number of tear-downs
• REPAIRFAQ.org has some good descriptions of LCD repair from the older models likely to be turned in to an "e-waste" program
• Digitimes, the Taiwanese high-tech display industry periodical, remains the rosetta stone of understanding the display market 

What should an "e-waste" recycler know about LCD lamp recycling, and when should s/he know it? Time for an "environmentalist actuary" to follow the goods downstream, into the domestic and export recycling markets, to tease out the risks, harms, rewards and benefits.


- Handle with care
- Stop the "zero landfill" practices for CCFL

2011 Display Device Price Freefall

Market Report on Used and Refurbished LCDs

The used CRT display device market has been on a slide for some time.  We have one of the only, and best, CRT refurbishing factory account purchase orders (which includes certified recycling of incidental breakage and parts recycling).  But the orders there have been cut from 180,000 units per month in 2006 to 5,000 units per month in 2011.

Part of that pressure comes from supplies from within Asia itself.   Office buildings in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Taipei, Seoul, and Jakarta were replacing their working CRTs in mass between 2008-2010.   Even steady demand in Africa, South America, and the Mideast was fulfilled cheaply by Asian supply.  Shipping from the East Coast of the USA through the Panama Canal, across the Pacific, for refurbishing in Indonesia, and shipping back to Egypt... that was more expensive than refurbishing locally for export.

That, by the way, was one of the big factors to the "California Compromise" collapsing a year ago this month.  While BAN and California explored the idea of setting high standards for Asian Refurbishers to meet, the Asians decided it was too little, too late.

Now, the same thing is happening with used LCD prices.   Below is an excerpt from one of my favorite, Taiwan-based trade journals.  Today there is oversupply in the large (new) LCD market causing layoffs and work stoppages, and some factories are going back to cutting LCDs into smaller sizes and targeting the same emerging markets as refurbishers.