Recycling Slag: True Environmental Law

Slag is a partially vitreous by-product of smelting ore to separate the metal fraction from the unwanted fraction. It can usually be considered to be a mixture of metal oxides and silicon dioxide. However, slags can contain metal sulfides (see also matte) and metal atoms in the elemental form. While slags are generally used as a waste removal mechanism in metal smelting, they can also serve other purposes, such as assisting in the temperature control of the smelting; and also minimizing any re-oxidation of the final liquid metal product before the molten metal is removed from the furnace and used to make solid metal. [wikipedia 2012.02.28]

This definition of slag is similar to CRT cullet from recycling operations.  There's a big difference, however, in how the two are regulated.  Where you would like to think that regulation promotes recycling over mining of virgin mountains, the opposite is true.

Mining and smelting has defended the practice of piling up used slag from foundries in massive piles all over the Western USA, Canada and Mexico.    It was debated whether these piles had to be disposed, in landfills, or whether they were really doing no harm in the desert and (as the capitalist model goes), that smelters would come back for it to mine it again when:

A) the veins of lead in mountains (second to silica, the most abundant element in slag) became more expensive to mine, and the slag would become more attractive, and/or

B) technology which already worked in the lab would be economical enough to turn the slag into a commodity.

The mines get bigger and bigger and the slag piles got bigger and bigger.    How does the regulation of recycled "slag", or by-product, compare?

Non-Toxic Stewardship: E-Waste's Consequences

Just a reminder...  Be careful what you wish for (or mandate).

Indonesia Komodo:   source of ROHS

When you replace toxics, such as lead solder, with non-toxic alternatives, such as tin-silver solder you might reduce the toxics going into lined landfills.  Hurray.

But you replace those (recycled content) toxics by mining tin from Indonesian and Malaysian coral islands, and by mining silver.  Silver mining is the number 2 source of mercury effluent into the environment (after #1, gold mining).

The point is that environmentalists have a moral and environmental responsibility to do their homework before implementing laws which do more harm than good.

My ecological friends have an inconvenient truth assumption, which is that if it's more expensive, it must be better.  Recycling is generally less expensive than mining, because it uses less oil (read:  less carbon) and produces less waste.

But if you tie that recycling up in red tape while managing metal mining under the easy rules of the General Mining Act of 1872, and then mandate use of a low-recycled-content feedstock (tin and silver), you just might be no better than the industrialists.

"Gee, you spoil all our conscientious fun."

Parkour: Do No Harm

I have been under the gun for several important deadlines in the business this month, auditing financials, environmental audits, and managing the huge increase in volume.  I'll probably post some more when in San Francisco (APEC meeting) and Washington DC (Peace Corps 50th Anniversary) this weekend.  It's a cross-country parkour of airports, hotels, conference calls, and bank deposits.

The previous post (Part I) has bugged me for months, and I finally just posted the bugger.  There is something important about horizonal and vertical lobbies, and how interested expertise plays upon cognitive risk perception in the public policy.  E-Stewards is definitely trending towards vertical lobby standards - establishing a standard which keeps out riff raff.  R2, on the other hand, is the first standard to be made mandatory law (Vermont regulations).   I can be arrested and put in jail for not meeting R2 standards.  It has some kind of a burden not to implement a standard based simply on the fact that not everyone meets the standard.  Facts are called for.