SEERA, HR 917 - A New Protectionist Message?

First let me say that there are several paying members of the Coalition for American Electronics Recycling (CAER) who I really respect.  We use several of them as subcontractors for our company. (My hunch is that they wouldn't want to be thanked here individually).

They haven't reached out to me directly, but appear to have taken serious note of admonishment on the blog.  They have dropped references to the "80% Dumping" claim (which was still on their website after Basel Action Network disavowed it).

The "perception - reality" logo, featuring the African guy carring a 1977 white Magnavox at Agbogbloshie is gone from the website.  "Primitive" Africans no longer feature in the press releases for the legislation that CAER was formed to promote...

But their interest is the same as any other heavy industry.  "Big Shred" are the companies with multi-million dollar investments in big heavy machines to automate electronics recycling.

Yin, Yang, Omm Part 1: Responsible Electronics Recycling Act (HR2791)

#FreeJoePenna Blog (one of 8 composed on a France beach vacation 2014)

WR3A became the anti-BAN.  But we have both been part of a Charitable Industrial Complex.

It's like a tug of war over dusty, desolated, impoverished Darfur, a guerrilla morality of ethical posturing.   A war between rich over who gets the rights to the poor's images. 

Poverty and inequality, or the perception of it, is power.  Ask Marxists about how to harvest envy.  The bigger the problem is perceived, the more you can justify meddling and redirecting the marketplace to "fix" the problem.  (appropriate illusion and background music by Brazilian MysteryGuitarMan Joe Penna, below)



There is no denying that there are problems and inequalities in the system.  But whether or not the poor are hurt more by the free market than by BAN.org's efforts to "fix" it, we are contesting a moral high ground which itself has an economic value.  In this series (Yin Yang Omm) I'm attempting to write about how the economically disadvantaged either benefit from the dispute, or from its resolution, or whether they have any interest in it at all, and who-the-heck-are-we in that equation.

In several previous blogs, like Environmental Malpractice, readers get a closer view of what it's like inside the planned obsolescence shredding industrial complex, and how it is driven by white man juju - liability.  The fetishes placed on the secondary market by people "responsible" for the continued life of products they've let go of force many to shorten the lives of the product.  Recycling laws have made it almost impossible to export working assets.  It is taking billions of dollars of USA assets which are wanted by less affluent but rapidly emerging markets, and turning them into toxic piles, and puts people supplying countrymen who cannot afford new product into jail cells.

Reactions to perception of inequality or injustice can drive societies to do irrational things, to burn witches at stakes, ban books, and shred new cars.   Envy can drive liability lawsuits, jealousy can sway jurors... (so Mazda said to heck with it).  That's right, liability for product has created a system which actually shreds new cars rather than punt them into poor countries, and the same system is increasingly positioning itself to shred refurbishing markets.

Through a proposed new law on exports to secondary markets, BAN and CAER essentially propose a paradigm where the emerging markets cheap labor is available to only to corporations, but are blocked from buying their own supply of work.  RERA would allow these people to do warranty repair, and to assemble and disassemble brand name goods, but not to purchase non-working products for reuse, repair or recycling.

The Responsible Electronics Recycling Act (HR2791)   

The Bill is supported by some people I really like. Niel Peters-Michaud, for example, has enlisted himself and his company both with E-Stewards, BAN and CAER, and has also been to Africa and testifies that limits on trade to that continent will produce better results.

"Do we really believe that the dream of someone in a developing world is to process our toxic e-scrap?  I think they would prefer to dream of driving a well equipped Audi." - Niel Peters-Michaud

Before going deeper into the psychology of two white CEOs from liberal northern states arguments over the welfare of Africans, let's look at what a state (California) with a system similar to RERA's has created.  Hint:  no new Audis have been distributed to any African nations.

Bullyboy 1: Toxics, Consumption, and Racism

There were 3 seminal works, all published in 1960, which have guided me.

• Silent Spring, Rachael Carlson.
• The Waste Makers, Vance Packard
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Toxics, Consumption, and Racism.   The Story of Stuff, or E-Waste Exports, is “...tria juncta in uno...”



Used electronics recycling policy, as a lens, reveals how liberal occidental policy responds to risks.  The risk of a "toxic", the risk of product obsolescence, and the risk racism.   Particularly of black men taking white women.  Oh, you didn't know white liberals had fears about the third?  How subliminal of me.

These three seminal works have salted the discussion of used electronics regulation.  Racially charged imagery, planned obsolescence money, cognitive risk of "toxics" without borders, are everywhere as we look at the arrests of men like Joe Benson, the seizures of goods purchased by Hamdy Moussa, and the closure of refurbishing factories like PT Imtech in Indonesia.  American society, as much as it has progressed, still betrays a willingness to believe in crimes based on the brown-ness of the accused.

Lagos Nigeria has 6,900,000 households with television.   But when someone photographs a solitary junk TV at a Nigerian dump, we assume it was dumped there from Europe.   So sure, that even when it turns out the trade in used electronics is owned, operated, and successfully steered by African owners, the goods triaged by African technicians and repairmen, in a marketplace echoing the success of Singapore's R&O (repair and overhaul), Japan's Network of Tinkerers, Taiwan and Korean reverse-engineering and good enough markets, NGOs are satisfied to see African businesses enchained rather than question the Story of Stuff assumptions.

Answer:  Not much, you?

The sparse number of scrapped goods in the photos at African dumps (see below fold, under the tire) were probably, statistically, generated in the streets of Lagos, one of the largest cities in the world.   But the story, parrotted by all the western press, is that it came out of a sea container, diverted from a recycling program in the USA or Europe.  We are so sure, in fact, that the US Congress now has a bill (H.R. 2791) introduced to make sale of repairable used electronics to Africans a crime.  Why look at photographic evidence when Annie Leonard has drawn it so simply?  African kids get junk because fat western businessmen don't want to pay to recycle it.

Washington, DC, Jul 24 - U.S. Reps. Mike Thompson (CA-05) and Gene Green (TX-29) today introduced H.R. 2791, the Responsible Electronics Recycling Act (RERA) of 2013. The legislation promotes the U.S. recycling industry by prohibiting the exportation of some electronics whose improper disposal may create environmental, health, or national security risks. 

"We'll start by burning the TVs from London hotel upgrades"

So, to truly connect the dots, Africans like Joe Benson and Hamdy Moussa are motivated not by consumer demand in cities like Cairo and Lagos and Accra, but by an altruistic need cut whitie's recycling bill.  But they don't want to do him such a big favor that they'll take ALL the junk, or any of the most expensive.  They cherry pick out the newest looking TVs and computers, to burn them, despite the fact the new ones have much less copper and gold than the old ones we never see in the African containers filmed by BAN and Greenpeace.

This was the circumstantial case presented in the arrests of Africans during the past year.  A few days ago, I got a chance to do a one-on-one, exclusive interview, with Joseph Benson, the man profiled in Jim Puckett's powerpoint presentation, in London.

Leading up to the meeting with Benson, I did a whirlwind tour of Europe by car, meeting at Interpol offices in Lyon (FR), with Basel Convention staff in Geneva and Fribourg (CH), and flew out of Copenhagen.  I met with four Africans accused publicly by Basel Action Network, Greenpeace, Rupert Murdoch's SkyNet News, and the UK Independent reporter Cahal Milmo, of buying used TVs, sold in Lagos for $100 apiece, to be burned by children for $2 in copper scrap.

Robert Ewell, call Sheriff Heck Tate.  There's a Tom Robinson running loose.

Wait 15 Seconds, Walk 5 Meters

If you don't like the recycling you see in the non-OECD nations (about 6 billion people), look elsewhere.  "Elsewhere" within the non-OECD is an incredibly sophisticated, layered, textured market.  Wait fifteen seconds, walk five meters, and you will see something or someone completely different.

Cameroon has changed since I lived there in the 80s.   Douala (the port city and economic capital) has just been "wired" by high speed optic, as of December 12... Cameroun's first "smart city".

Aya Heroines Rising

Meanwhile, the level of suspicion raised by anti-export groups has risen to comic book proportions.  There is a huge campaign, backed by nanny-NGOs, planned obsolescence, and heavy shredding investors, dedicated to preserving decade old images of children in puddles of filth.  They want us all to believe there is no convergence, that 6 billion people are moving backward, away from the OECD.

If you actually work with the geeks and the techs, you see that the world is developing in positive ways, faster than believed  possible.  Yes, there are child soldiers, there are terrorists, there are Somali pirates, there is disease, and there is poverty.  But the tide is rising, not falling.  And the seed is the same as in Singapore and Japan - Geeks and Tinkerers, Fixers, and Techs.

Plan Do Check Act

Poster Child, Toxic E-waste

At the California Sustainability Directors conference last summer, I was pinch hitting as a representative of R2 - Responsible Recyclers standards for "e-waste" recycling.  I was hastily invited by someone as a counterweight to what was originally a purely E-Stewards presentation on certification.

When certifications compete, it's a bit like warring doctors or feuding priests.   Both certifications were set up less than 18 months ago, neither has really been tested in the field.  Either may have unintended consequences.  It's only the second inning.

Both certifications are overseen by professional auditing bodies - ANAB and ANSI, the same which authenticate ISO, RIOS, and other standards and practices.  These bodies are designed to check on whether the standard is independently verifiable, legal, and can be implmented via PDCA - Plan, Do, Check, Act.  The standards are so similar in many respects that the auditors can use the same pages of verification interchangeably to ensure that the companies applying for the standards meet the same environmental, health and safety laws.   None of the standards have an in-house auditor playing Catcher in the Rye, catching children from falling into toxic fields.  PDCA is better than nothing, but it is weaker than a civil law contract.

How then do the certification advocates differentiate between them?  Marketing.

The groups which are invested in the term "e-waste crisis", the ones who would use prohibition in trade with techs of color as a solution, are using drama, guilt, innuendo and poster children to attack the other groups best efforts to promote best practices.   They treat companies seeking R2 as the new evil exporters.   Seeking to do good without the ayatollah's blessing leads to ayatollah cursing.

In describing "responsible recycler" practices in their Wikipedia article on "E-Stewards", Basel Action Network tries to poison the well on the term:

Jim Puckett, director and founder of BAN, said: "Sadly not all of those companies that call themselves responsible recyclers are truly responsible and many are not recyclers at all, but are just exporters. We have been to the techno-trash dumping grounds of Africa and Asia and seen the children being poisoned. This is why we created the e-Stewards Certification in the first place."^[3]

Jim made a similar accusation, in an editorial he published in 2009 E-Scrap News, that "fair trade" recyclers were "poisoning people".  He claimed to have knowledge that containers of refurbishable equipment imported into Indonesia was "hazardous waste" (same claim we are still waiting to shake out from his accusation against Intercon Solutions of Chicago Heights).

The marketing against a standard developed to improve e-waste trade is obnoxious at best.  The R2 "Responsible Recyclers" program represents a two-year consensus document approved by regulators, NGOs, and industry, not "just exporters".  It is the association with possible exporters which poisons all the other R2 certifications, according to BAN.   "Exporting" according to BAN, simply means poisoning children, not creating internet cafes in Africa.

Poisoning the well for alternative certification standards does not just affect the exporters or users of a particular practice.   Consider the effect on R2 companies which do not even export.   If you are R2 certified, even if you do not export, you may share a certification with someone who does export.  And that exporter, while they have been certified for proper and legal exports, BAN implies may be poisoning children...   You may be R2 certified and use no prison labor (most do not), but because a prison program can seek R2 certification, wham!  You are not the same as a prison program.    Someone who goes to a church which allows gay marriage is the same as someone married to a gay person... at least, that's the same logical thread.... Joe McCarthy reincarnate.

Just how big is the risk that an exporter "among" the R2 may be poisoning innocent little babies?   BAN is silent about the major study released on Ghana's imports of used computers, showing 85% reuse.  Why?  Why do professional AID workers, Peace Corps volunteers, and development officials applaud the same fair trade recycling importers in Africa which BAN says are poisoning children?  Why would stakeholders from NGOs, EPA, and industry "collude" on an R2 standard which kills children with e-waste?   Nevermind the fact that almost all the exports come from Europe and not the USA (BAN applauds the EU's higher standards).

When someone is promoting something, marketing it in this way, there's one common denominator.

Follow the money...  the difference between R2 and E-Stewards is payola to BAN... not a dime of which goes to help a single African baby.