Although I had a degree in International Relations, had spent a semester at the UN, and made a career in the science of development, I racially profiled someone in Singapore in 2005. I know it now. I deserve a rusty radiator for racism.
On my way back from Guangzhou, where I had gone for a second visit to see the second-hand shops of Foshan and the "Big Secret Factories" of CRT reuse, I stopped in Malaysia and Singapore for a couple of days. Armed with my camera, I decided to hunt for some "exotic photos" to prove that I too, like Jim Puckett of BAN.org, had "been there". Now, Interpol is trumpeting their act. with a project to describe their efforts to arrest "criminals" I refer to as the "geeks of color".
I understand where David Higgins' group at Interpol is coming from. E-Waste is in the news, and we want to show our credibility, show we have been there, walked the streets, and have seen the problem. We work for the (world) government, and are here to help.
The shop below I presented in a Powerpoint slide at a NERC.org conference as an example (an olive branch to Puckett and Westervelt) of clearly bad imports. I had stayed on the street, waiting for the man who owned this shop (Mr. Teck Recycle) to roll up the metal door. He had a ladder on the inside, which he needed to physically climb up to the ceiling to start to descend items for resale on the street.
I acted like I knew where this guy's material came from. I didn't.
It seemed the guy had packed this 4M x 10M street shop "to the gills" with imports, and was never going to be able to reuse it all. I represented this person as an example of "toxics along for the ride", of being an example of the primitive importer, and contrasted him with the SKD (semiknockdown or semi-knock-down) factories I wanted to "reform", in our view.
I confess that I assumed this was all recently imported material. I had absolutely no evidence of that. We now know that the 6 billion people in the "non-OECD" generate far, far more used electronic scrap than the OECD does.
Lets teach them all the missionary position, put them in top hats, and certify them as non-primitives.
Was Mr. Teck Recycle importing at all? Singapore, though not "OECD", was already as wealthy then as California. It had become wealthy via the "Tinkerer's Blessing", the reuse and refurbishment trade, which evolved into contract assembly, then into ODM (Original Design and Manufacture). Sure, some of this material may have been imported, but I had no idea how long before Mr. Teck Recycle got it. What percentage came from residents of Singapore, which at that time had a higher percentage of engineering degrees, and higher percentage of online high speed bandwith, than the USA's Silicon Valley? Why did I immediately assume the Singaporean shops were filled with USA "toxics along for the ride" (a phrase I pounded at the NERC audience?)
Sure, it was a sound theory. Maybe some of this stuff did come "along for the ride". But I had no proof, all I had was a need to position myself not-too-distantly from Basel Action Network's "80% Primitive Recycling" export statistic, which we now know is no more true than 80% of Los Angeles black teenagers are gang members and high school drop outs (BTW that's said tongue in cheek, it's obviously untrue, but the fact I have to apologize and point that out shows the root of whitey's problem).
Today (Friday March 15, 2013) is an "In-Service Day" in Addison County, and the Middlebury public schools are closed. One of those days that's not a holiday for parents, and we schedule little things like tonsillectomy (my son, 8:00AM), or trips to the dentist (my 16 year old twins) if we are thinking far enough ahead.
If you are in Middlebury Vermont today, and you didn't plan that far ahead, here's another opportunity. Good Point Recycling and the Ilsley Public Library are putting on a Special Event for Kids. In the spirit of the "maker movement", "yankee ingenuity", and can-do tinkerer blessing, we will exploit ... 'err.. hold on, I'm getting an urgent call from our PR office.
This hands-on workshop allows school-age children the freedom to explore the art and science of ”how stuff works” in the spirit of the popular “maker movement.” Library staff and re-use experts from Good Point Recycling will help you use hand tools to explore the mechanics of a variety of technologies from computers to telephones. Bring your own hand tools, such as screwdrivers and pliers if you have them. Adults and welcome too.
Back to the "Term Paper" (for those following). Here is how I overlay the "regulated areas" of "environmental justice" and "property value" on an actual case of "non-OECD".
(You may need to go back to "Term Paper 1-IV"). This is an academic post, which goes well with a video, but we also want these accessible in nations which csor videos, so here's a link to a "geographic" song, Rue St. Vincent, sung by Yves Montand. Open and listen in another window...
Case Study: Singapore and the Malay Peninsula
Malaysia, the nation, also includes huge rain forests in Borneo and Papua New Guinea - home to both the most biologically diverse and unstudied rain forests on the planet, disappearing orangutans, and the OK Tedi Copper and Gold mine (#evil). Where it is green, Malaysia is very green. But it's easier for the purpose of the case study to look just at the Malay peninsula, which Malaysia shares with the city-state of Singapore (at independence from the British empire, they were both part of Malaysia, but Singapore won independence fairly peacefully).
First, the "eyeballs diagrams" are NOT drawn to scale. Singapore is 704 square kilometers, Malaysia has 338,550 square kilometers. After a couple of years of co-governance, Singapore became independent in 1965; it still had not rebuilt from Japanese occupation during WW2. From Wikepedia 13.01.08:
Facing severe unemployment and a housing crisis, Singapore embarked on a modernisation programme that focused on establishing a manufacturing industry, developing large public housing estates and investing heavily on public education. Since independence, Singapore's economy has grown by an average of nine percent each year. By the 1990s, the country had become one of the world's most prosperous nations, with a highly developedfree market economy, stronginternational trading links, and the highest per capita gross domestic product in Asia outside of Japan.[1]
Peninsular Malaysia has 131,598 square kilometers, so even eliminating the islands Borneo and PNG, it dwarfs Singapore.
Preparing testimony for the US International Trade Commission's study on used electronics exports.
I'm going to describe a remote, exotic, primitive place.
The "non-OECD". 83% of the population of the earth lives there.
All the hard drives and all the smart phones are made there, and (a little more shocking to some readers) more than 50% of the patents, design and engineering of those devices also originated there. Hold onto your chairs - "Polaroid" LCD televisions (a significant share of the market) are not being made in Waltham, Massachusetts.
In fact, they are made in this same, exotic, faraway land of "non-OECD". In the same kind of factory that makes - Sony! Oh, you thought Sony was made in Japan? That's SO 1995.
I've been working all week on a formal apology - or rather, a "Separate Peace" letter for Basel Action Network. I'll never try anything like the California Compromise with them again. Whether the "outing" of the Indonesian SKD factory was the direct result of my sharing the information about them with BAN, or not, they were callous at best and continued to not lift a finger to help my friends...
But I learned last week that the Indonesians are shrugging it off. They appreciate my attention to righting the infamy. It hurt, the stupid anti-reuse policy cost them tens of thousands of dollars and forced shutdown of a recycling operation for Indonesia-generated e-waste.
But they are getting over it. Seeing them calm and laughing and making do reminds me of what I loved about my years in Africa. People didn't hold grudges so much, didn't take themselves all that way too seriously.
And so the point has come that I need to move on. If USA wants to keep thinking Egyptians are burning the computers they bought for $30 in a landfill and that Egyptian authorities in 2008 were concerned about the environment, well, we think plenty of stupid things and that's number umpteen on some list.
The trick writing-and-rewriting an apology is that it has to be done well. If you are not really ready to apologize and are going to work in some blame-deflection, then don't do it yet.
This was my family's hostess, a really beautiful young South American woman. She used to import used USA electronics, and built a business with 6 employees. Then she bought used Chinese TVs as Chinese cities all moved to flat screens. Then she bought cheap Chinese-factory refurbished flat screens. She'd like to start a factory making new product in Peru... but for now she's helping her brother open a restaurant in the shop they used to sell CRT monitors in.
I've been from Perpignan (France) to Barcelona (Spain) to CDG Paris to New York City JFK airport, where I sit now, waiting for the flight to Burlington Vermont. Boingo wireless, wifi in France, it's been nice to post photos to Facebook rather than send postcards. redemtech
During some slow periods in the vacation, I read my blogs of Christmas past, starting in 2006. They were very journal-like, too wordy, and rather introspective. I also read some more famous blogs of note, with thousands of daily reads.
This set of posts is incredibly specific, dealing with specifics of a recycling issue which is controversial in its time. The theme is that students of environmental policy can learn best from our mistakes (mine or yours) if we chronicle the dialogue, subtext, and controversy. Again, I could be wrong. But when I read my past posts, it's pretty clear that I'm sincere in my approach to recycling. Recycling beats mining, so improve it without shutting it down.
In the Good Point Ideas Blog, I chronicle trips to overseas markets, apply economic theory to my practical insider vision, and have tried to honestly disclose my own biases and self-interests. The blog boringly but logically explains our company's processes. The point is to write honestly about what I have seen. The worst recycling practices. And the very best recycling practices. In the same countries.
It's therefore fascinating to read blog posts by another "owner-operator" of another e-waste recycling company. On my visits overseas to my end markets, his company's material was being unloaded side by side with mine. There was nothing wrong, in my opinion, with his company's exports. I asked the guy who was buying them, and while he was not too happy with the ratio of P3s to P4s on this load, he was ok with the Ohio supplier. As he was ok with my product.
Personally, I kind of think the other CEO seems willing to push his Malaysian buyer-friends under a bus to gain BAN's accolades. I don't compete with him directly, he doesn't much touch the residential/municipal material we manage. He goes after corporate suppliers who are risk averse and wealthy, willing to pay a lot to have very repairable and valuable material taken care of. We have a lot of hair on our meat, and more crap to remove. In a way, my company should be defending BAN's vision of no "toxics along for the ride", and he should be explaining just how nice commercial e-scrap is to the developing world's high-tech remarket.
Perhaps his company no longer ships to the processors we shipped to together - the ones who care less whether a power supply is "tested working" (as they will replace it anyway for 220v clients), and care more about the speed of the processor and raster of the cathode ray tube. But there is a certain introspection lacking, given the apparent conversion. If I stop shipping good units to buyers in Jahor Bahru, KL, Jakarta or Penang, where we both shipped in the past, I will tell you I used to ship there and will tell you why I stopped. I will NOT post wire-burning monkey photos and act like I never shipped the capable technicians there, as I like to sleep at night.
(Video removed by viddler.com 2014)
I used to ship CRTs to China. They were good factories. But the Chinese government owns virgin-CRT manufacturing capacity, and does not want "grey market" or "second hand" products competing with their CRTs. They made it illegal and took away all the import permits. So I moved to countries - Indonesia and Malaysia, which had similar factories but still issued import permits. Other USA recyclers still ship to the Chinese reuse market, either via Hong Kong or to Viet Nam for overland shipping to Kunming. There are Chinese CRT refurbishers operating in special "import-export zones", like maquilas, that appear to have valid permits. But we chose not to play cat and mouse with the Chinese Communist Party.
Details, Details: The more specifically honest my posts, the longer they get. The CEO promoting e-Stewards is more succinctly written. But his experience with both good export markets and the USA front companies which exported his CRTs "less transparently" would add flavor to the blog. He and I were both invited to process our CRTs through a USA company. I inspected the company and found it to be a sham recycling operation, and when the EPA and China enforced against the sham recycler, I could tell our clients they had nothing to worry about. And even if most of the CRT monitors visible in 60 Minutes Hong Kong fly-over were going to good factories, I can write the truth about those factories AND assure our clients we DID NOT SHIP CRTs to Hong Kong.
As a forum to market his company, the Other CEO takes a simpler route. His advocacy of BAN and E-Stewards probably serves well. Explaining his personal experience with the export market would produce longer, less accessible posts.
I'm sure my blog fails to win new risk averse clients, though it may help retain the long term clients served since Earth Day 2000. If in 20 years, only profits we made now matters, he will have cleaned my clock. If, as I believe, the Singapore-azation of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Egypt makes them tigers, BRICKs, economic and development successes, then his participation in the denigration of their capacity to refurbish and recycle - given fair trade economic incentives - will be shameful.
While Singapore reached better-than-OECD status on an economy based on imports an refurbishing, that door is being slammed on Egypt, Kenya, and other nations with a "ban on imports" of western (working and repairable) CRTs.
Oh, yeah. While I was on vacation, I got news that Indonesia drank the BAN Kool-Aid and took away the import permit for the big secret factory. The one described by NRDC as a primitive wire burning operation. NRDC has never been there.
If you are one of the students who reads this blog - my favorite audience - I hope you will research Singapore and the "repair and overhaul". I'm generally handicapped in disclosing the specific, proud, hands-on refurbishing factories for fear their import permits will be taken away.
Ok, anti-export campaigners, I dare you to shut this down. Here is a really big operation importing Western Goods for repair and refurbishing, which replaces and recycles a lot of electronics. Rolls Royce has an aircraft "repair and overhaul" or R&O operation in (gasp!) non-OECD member Signapore. Western countries send our Boeings and Airbuses there to be completely overhauled. Under my (and EPA and UNCTAD and others) interpretation of Basel Convention Annex IX, that's a good thing. BAN, I invite you to explain whether this operation is legal and if so, what is the difference between Singapore overhauling a jet and overhauling a CRT monitor?
I probably need to at least prioritize the more substantive pieces, like "Top 10 Myths", "We Shouldn't Have to Make that Choice," "Big Secret Factories", some of the critical posts on certification, 60 Minutes, and "Proud to Be an Exporter". I'll work this week on a "Top 10 Posts", and start the painful process of cleaning up some of the redundant and derivative posts which may dilute the facts about ethical e-waste recycling and fair trade recycling.
