Good Point: Ethical Electronics, Recycling "e-Waste" Blog: convention

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Racketeering or Certification 6: Defamation Is The Only Product BAN Sells

The 2019 Certification or Racketeering series of blogs began about Total Reclaim of Seattle. Craig Lorch and Jeff Zirkle were sentenced last week on their fraud case. I offered to fly in to testify, and sent them a letter for the judge, to make the case (as in the blog) that the executives at Total Reclaim had been told by BAN that 80% of recyclers were shipping 80% of goods overseas, where 100% percent were smashed by hands in primitive conditions. As I testified at Brundage's sentencing hearing in Chicago, those were false claims.

BAN begins by defaming the Tech Sector overseas, with wild hallucinatory descriptions of thousands of orphans in rice paddies beating electronics with hammers.
BAN creates a lie about the Basel Convention having been "amended" to criminalize legal exports (reuse, repair and recycling are ALL legal under the actual Basel Convention, not just "tested working")
BAN then defames those who (like yours truly) question or rebut the initial defamation, or correct information they give about the Basel treaty.
BAN defames the companies who don't pay tribute through E-Stewards certification, and defames the alternative certifications.
If the companies like Intercon or Total Reclaim threaten to withdraw from BAN, or defend themselves (Total Reclaim exported far less than 10% of the material they received), BAN's enforcement is to defame them.

Essentially, defamation and slander are BAN's only product. And at its root, the initial domino of defamation - of people in faraway geographies beating LCDs and CRTs with hammers - is a fake statistic. BAN is the most ruthless in attacking anyone who questions their credentials.

What percentage of what Total Reclaim exported became "waste"? Was that the source of the corporate profits? Or were those profits, and the repeated purchse of flat screens from Asians, evidence that the exports were likely NOT WASTED? How does the Department of Justice conflate fraud, profit, and mercury to poison our minds with racist assumptions about Asia's Tech Sector when there is no evidence that the goods were dumped? The crime Total Reclaim execs pled guilty to was lying about the export, not knowing the goods were dumped or that the buyers were poisoned.

It's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Driverless Used Car and Electronics Imports to Africa

Follow up to the new "Driverless" UNU 2018 Person In Port Report

The headline, “Thousands of tons of e-waste shipped illegally to Nigeria inside used vehicles” was familiar. In my last blog, I gave readers "the fine print".

Almost everything documented by the 2018 UNU's "Person in the Port Project" (2018) report on used electronics imports to Nigeria corresponds with our 4 years of research in Ghana. Bottom line, the importers are presumed innocent. Most purchases are normal and good. The headline focuses on a statistic that 15,000 tons of 60,000 tons “didn’t work”. Put another way, 75% of the imported used electronics are fully functional. More importantly, the report tells us that of the 25% of electronics needing repair, Nigeria's Tech Sector is the best on earth at fixing them.

"The high skill level of Nigeria’s refurbishing sector, with the ability to fix many technical defects in UEEE at reasonable service cost, also motivates importers to import both functioning and non-functioning electronic equipment to Nigeria."

- 5.8.1 PIP Report 2018

The 2018 report avoids the “poverty porn” - pics of kids posed on old TVs, etc. - that marred its 2015 report. In almost every respect, the report shows a fairer image of Africa’s Tech Sector. And the most important concession Europe has now made is to concede the 2015 Report's KEY FINDING - motives of "drivers" to export "waste" - has been disproven. Joseph "Hurricane" Benson had no "driver" to put waste into his export containers. The only financial motive that can explain these shipments are intent to reuse and repair.

So the "driverless" waste export theory is busted. Let’s focus first on Ten Things the report gets right.

"Be Quiet! I order you to be quiet!"

- Arthur, King of the Britons, (Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

As I wrap up the "Bullyboys" case for exoneration of African traders, we are left with a simple question of authority. Jim Puckett told me directly, a few years ago, to "stop referring people to Annex IX of the Basel Convention." (the section that makes export for recycling, and repair, legal - so long as it isn't dumping). It was in the form of an order. Basel Convention was his "turf". He drew a line and told me not to cross.

"The Magna Carta Action Group."
"The Declaration of Independence Action Network."
"The Bill of Rights Action Center."

There are lots of authoritative names a small, underemployed environmentalist can bestow himself. Most Americans wouldn't fall for the "Associations" above. But if you select the name of a Swiss Treaty, and say "international law" enough times, you may even get an informed journalist to report your press release as something from an authority.

Ill defined legal systems produce bullyboys.

King Arthur: I am your king. Woman: Well I didn't vote for you. King Arthur: You don't vote for kings. Woman: Well how'd you become king then? [Angelic music plays... ] King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king. Dennis: [interrupting] Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

The difference between an authority and a bullyboy? Law. Courts. Constitutions. Consensus. And the problem in this whole case is that there is little in the way of an international court system. Lacking international law, and fed fake numbers by BAN.org, Europeans have reverted into bully justice.

Granted, true international law is more orderly. I've been to the the Hague, I've been to Strasbourg. But these are very busy places to get into. If you are arrested in Britain for a crime you are not even accused of committing where it didn't occur in Nigeria, and think you can find a place on the International Court Docket, go buy a Megabucks lottery ticket, right now.

Laws only "happen" inside borders. The police or Stewards or regulators who enforce international "law" are enforcing something that is extra-juridicial. That's why treaties have to be "ratified", to give them status of law inside the borders of a nation with laws and courts and police. Inside a border, giving "international" law to a policeman, there is otherwise no constitutional basis for appeal.

Your sole appeal is to the bully-boy.

Rumor Mongering: Is Jim Puckett Ousted at BAN?

For the past year, independent studies have piled up overwhelmingly demonstrating what this blog has maintained since 2007. Basel Action Network does not know what it's talking about, and is making it up as they go along. Whether they are told politely, or humorously, or angrily that their fiction is hurting the environment and developing nations, they ignore it.

E-Waste Watchdog "Basel Action" Re-Publishes Discredited Data

Or so far they have. But rumors this month suggest that the Basel Action Network's Board of Directors may finally be listening. Bad statistics are disappearing from the website. And in their latest press release, Jim Puckett's name and phone number is missing (Mike Enberg and Sarah Westervelt are listed as the contacts).

Is Puckett just taking a leisurely break following the latest COP (Conference of Parties) at the annual Basel Convention get-together? Or has the BAN.org board of directors finally started to listen to environmentalists and development professionals who told them their poster child campaign has gone too far?

"The majority of refurbished products stem from imports via the ports of Lagos. The interim
results from project component 2, the Nigerian e-Waste Country Assessment, show that 70%
of all the imported used equipment is functional and is sold to consumers after testing. 70%
of the non-functional share can be repaired within the major markets and is also sold to
consumers. 9% of the total imports of used equipment is non-repairable and is directly
passed on to collectors and recyclers."

- Final report of the UNEP SBC, E-waste Africa Project, Lagos & Freiburg, June 2011

Right wing think tank? Protectionist industry study?

"9% of the total imports of used equipment is non-repairable and is directly passed on to collectors and recyclers."

No. This is from the two year study of the Basel Convention Secretariat, one of the several listed at the UNEP and Basel Convention site. " Informal e-waste management in Lagos, Nigeria – socio-economic impacts and feasibility of inter-national recycling co-operations" And it is not a typo. Thats NINE PERCENT, not 90%!

Ok. It's not perfect. 9% of the used electronics purchased by Africans could not be reused or repaired, and that's a lot of waste. But is it bad enough to ban exports?

Take a guess what new item store returns are for product sold in California? 11.9%

That's right, dear readers. According to the National Retail Foundation, store returns of merchandise sold in California is nearly 12%. Now, no doubt some of those returns are "buyers remorse", and the NRF estimates that a certain percent is return fraud. But that's retail, it doesn't include damage in shipping... or static damage discovered before the goods are sold, or are pulled from the shelf because of high returns.

Here are the statistics of the percentage of electronics which are damaged by ELECTROSTATIC charges upon import to the USA. From ESD Association web site:

“Despite a great deal of effort during the past decade, ESD still affects production yields, manufacturing costs, product quality, product reliability, and profitability. Industry experts have estimated average product losses due to static to range from 8-33%. Others estimate the actual cost of ESD damage to the electronics industry as running into the billions of dollars annually. The cost of damaged devices themselves ranges from only a few cents for a simple diode to several hundred dollars for complex hybrids. When associated costs of repair and rework, shipping, labor, and overhead are included, clearly the opportunities exist for significant improvements.”

So damage to new electronics is estimated at 8-33%, and store returns in California are 11.9%. And Ghana and Nigeria studies found loss or damage of used product to be between 9% and 15%.

AND HERE'S the killer. At the Vermont Fair Trade Recycling Summit at Middlebury College, I learned that brand new product - the ones Africans can afford, cheap stuff from China - fails at a higher rate than used goods! The Ghana and Nigeria study never tested the new product, so there's actually not even a control group... but the Africans who came to the Summit said there's much less risk to buying used American name-brand electronics.

Based on the firehose of disinformation hurled at Africa technicians, the statistics above aren't ever considered. Basel Action Network fabricated, hallucinated, or otherwise made up the only statistic Interpol needed to arrest and seize the goods of 40 African electronics businesses in the past 6 months, 240 tons of affordable computers and televisions purchased by Africans for resale in their cities...

And now, without further adieu, here is today's press release from our friends in Seattle Washington. Click below... hear how Puckett describes the "reuse excuse", those nasty, polluting, toxic African techs. From the source of the "90% of Africa Imports are Primitive", here's a report from the Basel Convention.... which leading up to the Fair Trade Recycling Summit, is leaning our way.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Environmental Malpractice 5: Custody Case 1, Egypt

This is part 5 of a series on the impacts of "E-Stewardship" and "Watchdog" campaigns in support of a boycott of 6 billion people (the "non-OECD").

- Part 1: Due Disclosures
- Part 2: Accidental Racism
- Part 3: "Collateral Damage"
- Part 4: Poverty Porn

The hard work by the fixers, tinkerers, repairers and geeks in emerging markets, has been crushed underfoot by planned obsolescence, white guilt, and false data. Three names should be "e-waste martyrs":

Hamdy of Medi-com (Egypt)
Joseph Benson of BJ Electronics (UK, Nigeria)
Gordon of Advanced Global (Indonesia, Taiwan, Peru)

ARE YOU ASHAMED OF TRADING WITH GEEKS OF COLOR? I'm not.

Each of these companies suffered a massive trauma from seizures of used electronics they had purchased, tested for the specifications they gave the seller. In each case, they accepted a narrow lot of material - TVs of a specific size with RCA plugs, working CRT monitors for direct reuse, or CRTs of a certain size and model which could be remanufactured by a factory which used to make them. They paid and arranged shipping, and paid about 10 times the value the items would have as scrap.

In each case, they were tried and convicted in the western press based on the "primitive" associations made by Basel Action Network. False assumptions abou exports from rich countries (the ones with nice stuff), and photos of the domestic generation of "e-waste" in their own nations, were enough for the western press to cover the story without interviewing any of these men about their own "crimes".

The headline that the used electronics were "exported" made these men "e-waste criminals". BANimplied that the junk on the ground was the same that these three men imported. It was not. And Interpol believed BAN, and wrote that (because the sale was "organized") that this was evidence of "organized crime". And no American or European reporter has called ANY of these men to get their side of the "e-Waste" story.

Now universities, like University of Washington, are being asked to "sign up" and show pride in a boycott which would make Senator Joe McCarthy blush. We need Bob Dylan to write another "Hurricane" song.

Defamation Case #1: MediCom of Egypt

From Majella Magazine: Here are the children of Egypt, photographed provocatively next to garbage. Even the Egyptians are now in the act of "poverty porn" (this is not a BAN.org photo). This is from an article, Egypt, E-Waste, and the Digital Divide, by Arwa Aburawa

Egyptian children stand in a doorway flanked by piles of waste. It is not uncommon for impoverished children in Egypt to mine waste for raw materials

"According to recent statistics, the number of Egyptians using the internet increased 39 percent to 13.5 million between 2008 and 2009, and the number of people who owned a mobile phone went from 30 million to 48 million in the same period. The repair industry has no doubt played an important role in making such technologies available to those Egyptians on the lowest wages."

Two paragraphs later, Jim Puckett of BAN warns the writer, that the repair business is fraught with problems:

Jim Puckett from BAN, however, argues that “a lot of nasty imports are justified by the repair pretext” which creates hazardous waste (all be it over the course of a few years) that cannot be dealt with safely or effectively in developing countries. Anyone stating that they want to help developing nations bridge the digital divide by sending them electronic cast-offs also need to be questioned, as “e-waste is a toxic waste that needs to be dealt with and not traded with—we need to stop exporting our problems to others to deal with.”

Jim Puckett says "a lot". In the past, he was more specific. The BAN estimate peaked at "Eighty to ninety percent"... Basel Action Network was circulating bad estimates to the press for a decade. BAN knows next to nothing about Medi-Com or other importers in Egypt.

"Eighty percent of interracial marriages end in abuse and divorce". Imagine that totally fictious, alarmist, made up statisic... It would be an outrage.

In 2008, as the demand for used PCs and displays was at its peak, BAN got its way. Hosni Mubarak's government passed a law that defined any PC less than 5 years old (from date of manufacturer - which itself is usually 9-12 months prior to distribution - was "#ewaste". For display devices like monitors, which last 25 years, and may not be sold off the shelf in the USA for a year after manufacture, that is like banning cars which are two years old... and for Egyptians, who earn

Born in: Mexico, Mexico, USA, Palestine, USA, Taiwan, USA, Malaysia

So at our meeting in Vegas, Jim Puckett made the case that the world will be better if we all obey "international law", and that defamation of technicians, and closure of sustainable repair and reuse factories, is acceptable "collateral damage". Jim presents himself, again and again, as an authority on Basel Convention.

The use of international treaties to simultaneously protect the 6 billion people in "non-OECD" nations from ... bubble, bubble, toil and trouble... and the same time generate millions of well-intentioned dollars for a Seattle non-profit... This is not BAN.org's invention. Poverty Porn has been around for decades.

Since my days studying international development at Carleton College, and as both a volunteer and employee (cross-culture trainer) for Peace Corps Africa, we've been aware of the "poster child" syndrome. Here's a recent editorial on "Poverty Porn" by Nathaniel Whittemore at Co.Exist (and here's a film from an admittedly donation-based organization in Africa, MamaHope.org, which does at least give hope for a different message).

The Hollywood and not-for-profit-Guilt-Industrial-Complex are really nice people to hang around with, as Jim and Mike both were in Vegas. They are nicer people than I am. Calling them accidental racists or ayatollahs of #ewaste was a decent into frustration. If we are to turn them around, we need to first get their attention (which I've done) but then to find an alternative to the touchy word "racism".

A Modest Moral Proposal: Blow Up Basle

Why the Basel Convention Should be Morally Sunset.

Basel Perspective is Set in Stone

MORALITY DIMENSION 1: Integrity. Whether it's from Mother Theresa, or Honor Among Thieves, or Al-Qaeda's word of honor. This was the focus of yesterday's post on "favors". You are who you say you are and you do what you say you will do.

MORALITY DIMENSION 2: Intent. Distinguishing between the good deeds of Mother Theresa and the bad deeds of Thieves... is the intent good or evil? Just how moral are the things you intend to do?

MORALITY DIMENSION 3: Effect/Outcome. Whether through ignorance, or butterfly effects, did our best intentions (#2) and integrity (#1) result in something we'd judge as good? And how negligent were we if the "best intentions" go berzerk, or the perfect became the enemy of the good?

On the last, the problems we have in society are pride and ignorance. Religious believers who believe so intently in their prayers that they feel honor to strap on a suicide belt, that's the worst extreme (assuming God didn't personally tell them otherwise after all). But the literature also shows how people become vested in their image, their mistaken beliefs, financial motives, groupthink, their causes, and their dissonance, and just bad risk-benefit math.

Here's an idea: If we set a bunch of rules based on who was rich in 1960 to govern which cell phone factories can take back and refurbish the smart phone e-waste in 2012, maybe we should set an egg timer on those rules? Maybe ... just maybe.... these no longer "define morality"? Maybe what seemed moral for a broken black and white TV set in 1960 Dublin, Birmingham, or Athens doesn't still predict the best thing to do with a repairable HTC Evo 4G sold to Singapore, Taipei, or Dubai?

E-Stewards is stuck in time. Static. It appears to sink as the rising tide of emerging markets renders both the generation and end-of-life recycling statistics of 2002 completely and utterly analog. Maybe regulations written on typewriters, corrected with liquid paper, are too hard to update when elective upgrades and off-lease purchases and hot capacitor swaps make 4G recycling auto-correcting freedom geeks kneel to dictators' thugs, patent trolls, and anti-gray obsolescence corporations? Rules written for the classified ads of print news may not sync to with Alibaba.com.

It's not just "the war is over, dad". This is a totally different war than the Basel Convention waged against drums of toxic waste dumped on the beach in Cote D'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). This is a patent extention war waged most fiercely against Guangzhou geeks refilling "disposable" ink cartridges, and Cairo fixers swapping blown capacitors off of returned Optiplexes.

Environmentalists of Earth Day 1970 - we are no longer young. We must see that the dogmas of our elders are not a disease to which we are somehow immune.

PACE Yourself: Basel Logic of e-Waste Export

HP Blackbird 002 Crashes in the Dead of the Night.
An e-waste export crime in the making...

Basel Convention has a section on legal export which says that repairing electronics is not "Waste". The ENGO Basel Action Network protested that from the beginning, but lost. The ENGO now seeks to change this via a BAN "Amendment", calling the Convention as ratified as "an unfinished success story"...

In the meantime, while waiting for its amendment to be passed, BAN is fervently presenting the case that export for repair is indeed already waste. While waiting to get its export-crime law passed, BAN is also trying to get "competent authorities" in importing countries to act as if repair is already illegal.

Blackbird crashing inthe dead of the night

The NGO has already been very successful when either A) the importing country manufactures new products and sees protectionism value in BAN's interpretation, or B) is a dictatorship trying to stop affordable internet. 89.7% of e-waste enforcement I've seen may be within one of these two categories [tic]. Now they are trying to get the interpretation enacted by USA Congress. This is what HR 2284, the Green Thompson #Ewaste Bill, would do in the USA.

While waiting for export for repair to be made illegal, how is export for repair already in fact illegal? BAN explains the logic, in their own words. From the BAN Library:

The Problems with WR3A: Dirty Business

The fair trade recycling ideas, started with WR3A in 2006, have been steadily growing in recognition.

We hit a bump (as everyone did) during the recession in 2009-2010. Our WR3A model of cooperative marketing continued to be successful at funding end-of-life recycling at the back end of contract manufacturing (takeback) factories, ie using leveraged supply agreements to win improved processes overseas. But we ran into three problems:

"Terima kasih atas menggambarkan pekerjaan kami sebagai teknisi. Kami tidak pencemar kecuali seseorang mengirim kita polusi karena kita tidak memiliki pilihan lain pembeli kecuali e-limbah. Kami adalah pintar dan aku bisa memperbaiki hal-hal IT tidak ada masalah."

The quote above was posted from a commenter to the provocatively-titled blog post (one of the BEST series) "Are E-Waste Advocates Racist?"

My company has repeatedly been accused of being "an exporter" by companies which "don't export". If you don't marry, how could you possibly be guilty of spouse abuse? This is the logic established by companies like GARB, which posted to our Youtube video over the weekend

"GARB has the solution to the ewaste problem. The closed cycle principle. A must see."

As required, I came, I saw it. Hammermills grinding and chopping computers into little pieces that are then hand sorted by labor on an assembly line. It's "the solution" if you are looking for two things: elimination of screwdriver labor, and elimination of reuse. Yum yum. I feel so much better about mining lead, silver, and tin for my new Tablet or 80 inch video display. Having people pick up chopped pieces is SO much better than removing screws and sorting the same metals and parts, with some reuse.

The translation of the opening quote (auto-detected as Indonesian language)

Thank you for describing our work as a technician. We are not polluters pollution unlesssomeone sends us because we have no other choice except e-waste buyers. We are smartand I can fix things IT does not have a problem.

Dia-blogging with BAN's Jim Puckett

To his credit, Jim Puckett responded to my comment (posted yesterday in my own blog, but also appearing today as a comment below his own blog post on Ghana).

Sorry Glinda, you're busted

Jim makes his usual response, that a "mobile phone guidance document" trumps Annex IX. It puts everyone to sleep and obfuscates a very simple and practical legal fact: Basel Convention says that Parties can consider CRT display device repair to be a commodity and not a waste. It says that in black and white, and flow charts about cell phones simply distract and confuse.

The mobile phone guidance document, which was published several years after the Basel Convention was passed, says that if a technician buys a fully functional unit but electively decides to upgrade a part and make it last longer or work better, that the part that was removed was a transported waste, making that smart technician illegal to work with. It's a white man's burden thing, not IFIXIT neutral.

This was the case BAN tried to make to the Secretariat about CRTs a decade ago. Now they are making a similar case again in the still-live-document PACE guidance on computers... if something might get replaced in order to upgrade, it must be removed prior to export.

But this is where BAN gets conflicted between its role as an advocate to change (amend) the Basel Convention and its role as a supporter of the Convention as it is currently written. I've accused BAN of becoming so blinded by that dual role that they have made ad hominem attacks on geeks of color, allowed journalists to believe and report that SKD factories buying CRT and LCD monitors for refurbishment are explained with a trip to Guiyu, which was never a CRT monitor refurbishing center nor even a CRT scrap endpoint.

All electronics importers are same

BAN lumps Glindas, the good witches with bad Witches of the East and West. The average journalist, like Dorothy, does not realize Glinda is a witch at all. Exporters are not all bad, and we need good exporters to make the world better. Shredding fails. A "Steward" with no reuse is a prohibitionist, who will call for more and more Elliot Ness enforcement rather than admit that Prohibition doesn't work.

Recycled Content Ju-ju Words

Recycling causes tuberculosis, and other nasty reporting...

The Independent, a reputable UK Newspaper, reports with fanfare how nations are a step closer to banning the trade of used electronics to "non-OECD" nations. In the future, western nations will still be able to mine their coral islands and rain forests for the hard rock raw and rare earth materials rich nations need to manufacture electronics. But the emerging markets will not be able repair, knock off, refurbish or remarket our used goods... the truth about what happens to exported cell phones, as reported by The Atlantic in an article with IFIXIT.

It's not about pollution. We know that metal mining and refining, raw materials industries, produce 45% of all toxic pollution released by all industry. We know that the coltan mining and gold mining bring the mercury and toxics, and creates the trafficked paths to bushmeat and rare species exploitation. We know that recycling jobs are sustainable, lasting forever, but that veins of ores become dead ends and are abandoned to become the most toxic places on earth.

It's obvious that the free market prefers reuse and recycling. If we are to maintain the marketing campaign of planned obsolescence, we need to convince these lesser developed nations that computer repair is bad. We need to cover up the detailed data that shows 85% of the used electronics imported are reused and refurbished. We need to convince them that they are hazardous waste. The Independent Article takes a step in this direction, informing us that "tuberculosis" comes from "recycling". I had always thought it was a contagious disease associated with poverty. If poor people recycle, and poor people are more likely to have tuberculosis, that is "just enough information" to create an impression.

From the article, one would assume it's legal for Africans to stay barefoot and pregnant, mining coltan in rain forests for us to make brand new cell phones to sell them, but NOT to fix them for revolutions in Cairo.

How does our society, whose manufacturing system is sustained by exploiting rain forests, for metal for us to make into gadgets, market the word "Recycled"? How do we let them manage the toxics from getting raw material, without letting them fix up our old product ("market cannabalization", another nasty term I learned for "reuse and repair", from the Obsolescence Class)? We need a system to shred product prior to shipping it for recycling (shredded goods go to China), and to mine rare earths... something that doesn't get in the way of new product sales. We find that dictators, afraid of the access to information the internet brings, and wealthy from sale of their nations raw material resources, are happy to classify used computers as "hazardous wastes", and bring the Basel Ban Amendment closer to passage.

Does it make any sense to define secondary material (reuse, repair, recycle) as a "waste"? Waste is excrement... we have a natural revulsion... good. goooood.

R2 Responsible Recycler Certification Vs. E-Stewards Certification: Synopsis

What is the difference between Responsible Recycler (R2) and E-Steward Certification?

There are already several posts this year about the technical aspects of the Basel Convention, EPA Export Rules, and differences in perspectives on "fully functional", "tested working", and "elective upgrade" of used computers and components. A list with links follows below/bottom.

I've been involved with "legalese" since my days as a regulator. When is a product "discarded"? What is "original intended use"? Does Basel Convention Annex IX allow an overseas buyer to "electively upgrade" (replace and improve parts) and refurbish? What is "major reassembly"?

Dialogue with the groups opposed to international trade was rational and factual during the R2 Stakeholder meetings, and so continued when BAN.org organized a competing "E-Stewards" Certification program. However, when BAN's marketing of that campaign, and of their views about the contract manufacturing or SKD facilities, turned negative, I became negative as well. I hoped R2 Solutions and ISRI would continue the level headed dialogue with the protest organizations, and from time to time I could use the blog to express the opinions of "geeks of color", which was increasingly disgusted with the way Watchdog groups equated their elective upgrades with "primitive wire burning".

The central difference between E-Stewards and R2 comes down to this: In non-OECD nations (China, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc.), can a material be legally recycled if no toxic constituents are released per Annex III? Who answers that question? The ayatollah of e-waste, or the competent authority (EPA)?

For example, can a computer refurbisher in Singapore send upgraded circuit boards to Japan for refining, or send them to the same circuit board refiner in Singapore that off-spec newly manufactured product and warranty return product is sent? If so, the professional warranty-return, manufacturer takeback factory, in an ISO14001 factory, could keep its jobs, buy tested working product, and electively decide to replace working but worn parts, replace 110 volt boards for use in 220v countries, degauss cathode ray tubes for changes in hemispheric magnetic conditions, remove analogue boards and replace them with digital tuners, etc.

- R2 says yes but demands 3rd party certification that the non-reuse constituents were in fact legally recycled in a manner which did not result in release of Annex III constituents.

- E-Stewards says that even if the part is properly recycled, and no toxic is released, that the part must have been removed prior to shipment.

Monkeys Running the Environmental Zoo

Ok, this is a post which I've worked on in draft form and set aside for several months. It's complicated. Today the environmental community is split down the middle, whether to reform the international trade in used electronics with R2 and other Fair Trade standards, or to boycott ewaste export trade via E-Stewards. Having posted my own "simple" "Ten Myths about "E-Waste", I wanted something for thoughtful people who have longer attention spans. Debate is fun.

One of my favorite books of the past ten years is Bill Bryson's non-fiction "A Short History of Nearly Everything". I admire Bryson's ability to provide so much infomation in such meaningful context without seeming pedantic or dense. He describes the formation of the planets from the perspectives of the early physicists, makes geologists as exciting as movie stars, and recaptures "eureka!" through the eyes of the discoverer. It's an opera of science; reality seems as bizarre as Lost or X-Files. The anecdotes are entertaining and get the point across. I wish I could write about "electronics recycling" markets that way.

Bryson tells the story of the formation of the solar system, evolution of life, etc. in a sweet little two-day read. The green drama between BAN and NRDC on the one side and R2, EPA, ISRI, UNCTAD and WR3A should be simple.

My dispute with Basel Action Network has nothing to do with pollution, and nothing to do with who cares more about people in the developing world. There are just two ways to get metal - recycling or mining. BAN agrees that metal mining is a disaster.

Here is one of dozens of exasperating articles on the web BAN has inspired, with a tagline "When Recycling Isn't Green". The "Downside of Upgrading" post in Blue Planet, Green Living appeared February 2, 2010 by Caryn Green... It quotes BAN from the top, and the author takes them as an authority, stating for the record that the "vast majority" of computers are exported, and that by far, most of those go to "burn villages".

“Most electronics recyclers do not recycle the material at all, but simply throw it into a seagoing container and export it to destinations like China, India and Africa,” said Basel Action Network’s Sarah Westervelt. “In these developing countries, your old computer or TV will be smashed, melted, and burned in highly dangerous and polluting operations by a desperately impoverished and unprotected workforce.”

BAN is sincere, I guess. But the marketing for the boycott approach is getting ahead of the science. The propaganda campaign is leveraging white guilt for green outcomes, with photos of brown kids hanging out at grey landfills. They feel justified, probably, by their distrust in business motives or outcomes of trade.

But R2, EPA, ISRI, UNCTAD and WR3A are a strange set of villains for BAN to wage war against. None of us advocates for disposal of toxics in third world landfills. Part of consensus is to stop impugning the motives of people who disagree with us. I think I've said plenty about them being wrong, or having unintended consequences, and probably make them out to be this side of arrogant. But I don't think I've accused them of more than attraction to job security when it comes to their motives. They want less pollution overseas.

The question is not whether but how the junk stuff got to the landfills where the BAN kids are flaming it, and in what percentage? BAN's logic is that if they require more red tape, they cannot be as responsible for the residue at the landfills. Someone with more permissive standards has to be responsible. <`2013- Maybe home-grown? Lagos households with TV in 2007 = 6.9M?>

The patient needs a second opinion. China is starving for plastics and metals, and Africa is hungry for computers. If most recyclers are bad, and most recycling is bad (both contentions of the BluePlanetGreenLiving" post), then most of us should not use our local recycling option, right? Friendly fire, mining wins. Bill Bryson uses analogy to make reasoning and math more accessible... let's try that.

How can stricter standards create a bigger mess?

Parable of the Banana Famine:

The zoo of international faces, the menagerie of gadgets...

BAN requires zookeepers to peel bananas before giving them to monkeys, to avoid peels in the cage. A clean cage is a healthier environment, and they suspect people are throwing empty peels in the cage. But the monkeys are still famished because BAN's zookeepers don't actually peel many of the bananas. They keep the cage free of peels by destroying the bananas, rather than training the monkeys to pick up their own peels.

Soon enough, visitors to the zoo start to feed the monkeys, and who knows what they are throwing in the cage. Chaos results, and an even trashier cage. BAN reacts to the lawlessness with a campaign to end monkey cage abuse. Everyone in town is ashamed of our zoo. So the best and most well intentioned of the visitors stop throwing any food into the cage.

California is the hippy dippy result. California destroys lots of bananas. Their banana-waste diversion program subsidizes banana disposal... But like a sorcerer's apprentice, the state pays more for banana waste than the value of a #6 ripe banana. California becomes a banana-magnet, a "giant sucking sound" affecting markets in neighboring states, an SB20 robocop funded out of the pockets of California taxpayers.

So I suggested that California could reduce its banana recycling costs by diverting peeled bananas, prepared to BAN standards, to feed the monkeys. I try to explain that BAN's problem is the peels, not the bananas, and I begin to make some headway. BAN's inactive zookeepers, who don't have state funding, can throw away unpeeled bananas, and we'll feed the monkeys from California's subsidized system... with some revenue to spare.

But triple-hypened regulators are an over-worked and risk-averse bunch.

The head California banana regulator worries about bad press over the monkey cages, and anyway, he's got a full time job trying to catch people not shredding their bananas and still taking state funds, or bringing bananas from Arizona, or making sure the tonnage of smashed bananas is cared for in Yuma Arizona or Mexicali Mexico. It's a full-time job, checking individual banana origins with dog-eared telephone books in a medieval IRS audit. California is too busy enforcing that the right number of bananas get shredded, and verifying the weight of banana waste, and of course also doesn't want to be responsible for the zoo's cage. So California actually requires their zookeepers to smash each banana, and hires bureaucrats to track the slippery paperwork, and to track that the end markets do NOT include zoos... it's admittedly very thankless work.

Along the way, someone with a friend in Europe always peeps in with the precautionary principle... even IF I succeeded in feeding bananas to monkeys, the monkeys will go poop. Poop gets on the floor of the cage. You shouldn't feed a monkey until you come up with a plan for the poop.

* * * * *

Now, those familiar with my blog know that in describing the evolution of environmental standards, am I NOT calling Africans, Asians and Latin Americans "hungry monkeys". My entire point is that the technicians overseas are being treated as such (note who is 'running the zoo'). I looked for an online image of the scientist Ape Zera from that terrific scene in "Escape from the Planet of the Apes"... having revealed her intelligence, she discloses her ability to speak with that famous line... "Because I loathe bananas!" These are technicians, technicians who become engineers, and whose kids may grow up to be scientists. In the propaganda war between well meaning environmental organizations, factories far superior than anything existing in the USA have been tarred with the label of unsophisticated "wire burning villages". I was hoping for an Animal Farm effect. Mark Twain has been called a racist for using the n-word to describe Jim in Huckleberry Finn.

Setting the banana peels aside, here is my business analysis of the junk computer monitors BAN shows in Ghana and Guiyu. I'm able to do this because I am engaged in the trade, I have experience, I want to do the right thing, I follow up on my results, and dammit, I won't shred a banana in sight of a hungry monkey.

Q: How do bad monitors get overseas?

Follow the money. Start with shipping costs. Someone had to ship them. There are several online sources of freight quotes (they also give you a picture of how complicated it actually is to complete international shipping paperwork). Here is one. My door-to-door rates for the containerload to Dakar Senegal (WR3A video) was about $7000, including taxes and inland freight. Who pays the FREIGHT?

Answer 1: Some African businessperson paid $6000 to ship 1000 pieces ($6 each) and then delivered them to the landfill, where the 1000 pieces are broken for $1.65 each in copper. The importer has taken a loss of $6000 - $1650 or ($4,350)... plus in most cases paid the USA shipper for the television or monitor, about $4 each. Net loss to Ghanaian = $8,350 per container, and the apparently insane Ghana Businessman does this over and over again... actually accounting for 80% of all the e-waste recycled in the United States, by paying $8 each for $1.65 worth of copper which he gets somehow from the "burn village".

Answer 2: Assume there's at least a breakeven percentage on the container, then at least 70% (700) CRT monitors must have been sold at $15 each to cover for the loss in shipping plus the loss from scrap ($4 paid -$1.65 scrap). So up to 300 bad ones can be on each container (if the importer is satisfied with breaking even.)

Answer 3: Maybe the used electronics once worked in the developing country, but have worn out? Someone should at least look into that, right? Someday the 700 monitors used will break or cease to be economically repairable (and low cost imports does affect the willingness to repair). And maybe they are importing so many, and demand is so high, that even a 30% residue rate makes a big mess. For that matter, brand new monitors imported will someday wear out. (But the precautionary principle shouldn't keep people in the dark...)

The breakeven point in China is different than in Ghana, and the tolerance for bad units is higher, because of lower shipping costs. Shipping is cheaper to Hong Kong because of the "empty seats" on the sea container vessels (ships have to go back to Hong Kong with empty containers to get more Chinese made stuff for Americans). You can find container rates for China at $2000 (with inland freight) rather than $6,000+ to ports in Africa.

Because China has the factories that made the monitors, they also have a higher refurbishing rate for whatever monitors show up.

You cannot sell many working used monitors for $15 in China... they'd rather use it as a $5 core and turn it into a $30 TV. China doesn't buy working used monitors for resale, because China is becoming a net generator of used monitors. China now ships the the refurbished ones to Africa. (In special "import for re-export zones", some of these factories were considered legal. But for the most part it is illegal, because the Chinese communist party owns the new CRT factory, and doesn't like competition.)

So if the value of the working ones is only $5 (for SKD cores) in Hong Kong, and the scrap copper is still $1.65, you still could not achieve BAN's 80% bad rate and get $2320 to cover the $2000 shipping costs. for more than $0.32 per monitor. If you are paying at least $1.65 (scrap price), plus shipping, that's $3650 per container or $3.65 per monitor.

(Good * $5) + (Scrap * $1.65) = $3.65

Good = [(2.21 - Scrap) * 1.65] / 5

1 = [(2.21 - scrap) * 1.65] / 5

which I think calculates out to scrap = 41% possible or 410 per load...

BAN and WR3A are both concerned about 41% scrap. We don't ship to China because it's illegal, but also because the prices make this a possibility.

WR3A's "fair trade" solution requires the USA exporter to first document that they remove AT LEAST 30% of the CRTs domestically, before shipping, and to recycle those here. This doesn't guarantee better than 70% good product, but it makes it more likely (breaking good ones and shipping bad ones makes little sense). Second, the WR3A importer must reconcile each load and report how many incidental breakage or bad ones. If they provide glass recycling records, they get paid $3 each (enough to make a profit after copper scrap). The incentive for fraud would be for the importer to over-report bad ones, selling some at $15 but reporting they were bad. Still, WR3A exceeds 85% reuse, and our better members exceed 90%.

Then WR3A pays the importer for any and every bad one, which means that if we are still making $1.50 per monitor, we have to be doing better than 80% reuse. And when we ship to a more expensive port - like Penang, Malaysia, the breakeven is even harder to achieve with bad loads.

Meanwhile, the documentation on the bad residue shows that the importer is not only providing 85% good product to people in their country - they are also creating a domestic recycling infrastructure. Our longest relationships include buyers who now collect scrap generated in their home countries, and recycling operations which are ISO14001 and ISO9000 certified, have legal import permits, and meet R2 compliance requirements.

BAN still maintains that export for repair is illegal. They presume that "fully functional" and "tested working" have a better rate than the 85%, which is far from certain. Chinese refurbishing factories can't work with Japanese CRTs, even working, and since China is a net generator of CRTs, sending them working Japanese CRTs is actually worse than repairable non-working Korean CRTs.

Here is the catch-22. The best possible conservative scenario is to ship "fully functional" units, selected by BAN standards, but sell them to the most sophisticated manufacturer takeback sorting, i.e. WR3A standards (working Japanese CRTs removed), sold to the WR3A importer. However, the most professional factories still upgrade the units, and BAN says that the upgrade or refurbishing (making the unit nicer than it was before) may involve removal of parts... e.g. upgrading a 30g working hard drive with a 300g hard drive, or replacing 256k RAM with gig RAM, or in the case of monitors, upgrading the boards and making them new-in-box. BAN therefore appears to maintain that the factory which has done everything right and created a domestic recycling infrastructure has crossed a line into illegality by upgrading "fully functional" items.

When I brought up this Catch-22 or unintended consequence (directing sales away from the best and brightest importers), BAN suggested that the tubes be removed from the cases... Pre-peel the bananas.

This requires a repair person in the USA to remove any parts that might be replaced or upgraded. For example, this would include the 120volt power supply, which is useless in many countries, as well as tuners and capacitors. BAN has recommended that the entire casing of the monitor be removed, and the CRT be sent bare if it is going to be rebuilt.

- Outcome #1: The bare tubes are more fragile and have a higher percentage of toxic residue which must then be recycled (CRT glass) by weight than the WR3A shipments.

- Outcome #2: Actually, none of the E-Stewards is practicing the tube stripping. Most of them are destroying the CRTs in the USA and depriving the marketplace of $20 video display units. This leads to shortages, which are filled by less reputable exporters. Those exporters provide the waste at the landfills, which BAN then photographs children next to, providing job security.

- Outcome #3: Eliminates Shangri's job. Remember the proud young African tech from Congo in the WR3A video?

WR3A requires that any incidental breakage, which occurs more in the BAN method but occurs to some degree in either method, is documented to be recycled glass-to-glass, and the importer is treated fairly, i.e. financially compensated for the recycling costs of the incidental breakage. This gives us good records.
. . . . . .

Darn. This post, I've been working on it for months, and it's STILL too long. I don't write as well as Bill Bryson. The more technically adept and scientific my posts, the less accessible they are. And the more banana - monkey -zoo my posts are, the more I fall into the oversimplification. I woke up at 3 AM today and have now spent almost 2 hours on this post... this is not a sustainable operation. But it's an ethical one, and the ethics of e-waste are what makes it interesting.

By the way, speaking of Mark Twain, he has finally had his autobiography re-released without edits. It is coming out in three volumes. I like his quote about Cecil Rhodes, the mining magnate who created the Rhodes Scholarship.. ("I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake")

I think I'm in a scene from the marvelous British comedy Fawlty Towers (a MUST rent is "Communication Problems" episode - "I speak English very well. I learned it from a book.")

Bill Bryson, Mark Twain, Cecil Rhodes, John Cleese and Zera from the Planet of the Apes... and Manuel. It has taken me months to piece this post together, this short history of nearly everything about ewaste, and now that my family is in France (they get more vacation weeks than I do), I can finally sew up the story of e-waste exports. I fly to meet them in Barcelona.