TOP 10 Themes to Ingenthron's Good Point "e-Waste" Blog 2006-2016

If you are going to map this blog to take my insights for a thesis, article, or term paper you are writing, I'd be glad to help though I don't have that much time to insert links below. Let me know whether I've forgotten any.  Because I might be finished.

These ten themes have valuable lessons outside of e-waste policy.  They are examples of examining an electronics recycling problem, and finding a universal that will lead to more environmental justice (and less environmental malpractice) in other trade policies.


1) Mining a ton of material always pollutes more than getting the same ton by recycling.

The hand-wringing about "perverse consequences" of recycling can lead to improvements in the recycling process.  But any "gotcha" or "dirty little secret" stories need to face up to situations like copper mining at the OK Tedi Papua New Guinea, the lead mining at Kabwe, the 14/15 largest USA Superfund sites, etc.  If you dispose of X out of concern over it's recycling process, and the same quantity you disposed of has to be mined from a rain forest, don't pat yourself on the back.

2) Elective Upgrade Decisions are Relative, Tied to Value Added

The second-hand market allows a chain of affordable use.  When a rich person chooses to upgrade to a new device, the environmental costs of production (like mining) remain embodied in the old device, which is now affordable to someone who could not have afforded a new device.

This creates a "critical mass of users" in emerging markets necessary to support investment in cell phone towers, internet cable, satellites, TV stations, etc. You can't raise enough taxes to repave a road if none of your citizens owns/affords a car.  Don't feel guilty about getting something new - so long as your used good gets reused.



More below

E-Waste Export Hoax Coming "Home" to Roost

Recycling Today reports on the US International Trade Commission Study - the fifth, I think, to say that between 80% and 90% of used electronics purchased (with money) and shipped (with more money) by Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans were working or repairable.

"Exports accounted for $1 billion in sales of refurbished UEPs and $439 million in recycled material.  According to the study, despite longstanding anecdotal accounts to the contrary, 88 percent of all UEPs exported as repaired/refurbished are sent “tested and working.” Only a small share of U.S. exports, less than 1 percent (0.8 percent), is sent overseas for disposal."

Is it any surprise that BAN.org was this week turning its Watchdog Binoculars onto USA E-waste processors who are speculatively accumulating crushed CRTs?  The NYTimes article barely mentions exports, its focus is all the money that has been paid for DOMESTIC USA recycling which has led to nothing but big piles of toxic glass on the ground.

I was tsk-tskd as going too far when I wrote the article last year, E-Waste Recycling Hoax.   Pleas to #freeJosephBenson never got a retweet.  Everyone (especially CAER) kept to the hymn that 80-90% of USA's CRT televisions and monitors are not being processed, but dumped in China and Africa.  The 85%, or 88%, or 87%, or 90% studies (of what arriving overseas is good for reuse) got no ink.

But now NYTimes says that NGOs are protesting the massive piles of CRT glass from tubes collected in the USA's domestic recycling programs.

 What does this picture say?

It says the Africa export story was indeed a hoax.   But Watchdogs have turned the page, and are poaching game in the USA's home turf.

Well, it's not a complete hoax.  There was some truth to Basel Action Network's export story.  In my passion to defend the Hurricanes (Hamdy, Benson, and Chiu) I don't want to pretend there is not serious room for improvement in e-waste recycling overseas. There are indeed toxic repercussions of burning wires, or using aqua regia acid to get gold.  There were, indeed, toxics along for the ride.  The exporters had the control, and the power, and externalization did result.  The problem is, a boycott took the agents of conscience out of the trade, and gave those with less conscience even greater power to leverage the demand, and sell into it.

Externalization economics had affected some aspects of the trade in used electronics.  Exactly as externalization economics have resulted in mining raw materials in rain forests, just as it led to the "anti-gray-market" seizure of used goods, challenges to first use policy, delayed patent exhaustion, and other wars on the poor.  Tinkering, fixing, and refurbishment isn't perfect.  It can indeed be reformed and made more fair. But tinkering and repair are the go-to game for the poor.   Arresting Africans, seizing their purchases, and putting them in jail just doesn't deserve the air time that it competes for with ivory hunting, sex tourism, and child soldiering.  Arresting the victims isn't my idea of restitution.

BAN's Jim Pucket was this week back in the NY Times, his camera binoculars set on USA CRT processing companies.  Once his darlings, are the domestic CRT processors now the next scourge of e-waste? Will BAN feed on its own, for speculatively accumulating CRT glass he told them to take apart despite the orders from overseas factories that wanted to repair and reuse them?