TV Industry Forecasts and Retrospective

I know that recycling is a science.  I learned about paper making from paper engineers, and if you don't know how paper is made you won't be a good recycler.  We made a big mistake in 1992 promoting recycled content in writing paper when we could have first maximized it in toilet paper.  That was just a money mistake, it was wasteful to cut down trees to make toilet paper (making fibers shorter) when the main challenge to recycled writing paper was that the fibers were too short to make quality writing paper....  One part passion and two parts study has been a good recipe for this environmentalist.

Since I took the "special assignment" of CRT Consultant for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental  Protection in 1998 (a queer public management option where you accept a "demotion" and get 3 days per week and a $11K salary increase), I've been learning about display devices.  Still a very "visual" technology, like writing paper.  But very high tech and "science-y", as Colbert might say.

I'm really good at these now.  I read industry magazines, some translated from Chinese or Japanese, and I follow what is going on.  This keeps me from chasing a "today's price" on, say, used LCDs, or allows me to sell my stocks of display devices short when the market is turning.   And the market has been turning the wrong direction on display device pricing for the past 3 years.


Last year was good for cell phones and pads, and therefore for small "touchscreen" display makers.  But it's been a real tough time for big TV screens.  CRT manufacturing may actually outlive Plasma Display screens, and few Americans would have predicted how long they stayed valuable.  But there's an end in sight.

The large drop in volume is due to decreased TV shipments into Japan, down from 19.8 million units in 2011 to just 7.5 million units in 2012, following the end of government subsidies for eco-friendly consumer electronics. Not counting Japan, global TV shipments are set to remain broadly the same in 2012, with growth in developing TV markets like Latin America and the Middle East-Africa offset by the small decline in North America and Europe.

Meanwhile, shipments this year of legacy cathode ray tube televisions (CRT TVs) and plasma display panel televisions (PDP TVs) will continue to fall precipitously. CRT TV volumes will slide from 25.5 million in 2011 to 15.8 million this year, while PDP TV shipments will retreat to 8.9 million in 2012, down from 13.9 million last year.

Growth will return to the television market in 2014. Once this stabilization occurs, the year 2015 will see global shipments return to growth, and sales will rise in countries such as Brazil, India and Indonesia.

The one prediction I've made about the sale potential for used CRTs has been this:   The last new CRT will be made before the last used CRT is resold.   Now, because of Communist Party Chinese (aka Military owned factories) investment in CRTs, they have been produced quite stubbornly and at a probable loss.  But the adage about the "last used sale" beating the last new sale is still true.

The Basel Convention: Bayesian Soup Nazi Episode

Ok, Another E-Scrap Conference, and another allusion to an American comedy.  I hope my international readers will be patient.

R2 or E-Steward?  Who has the best recipe?

Yesterday's E-Scrap 2012 Conference in Dallas had two sessions worth writing about.   John Lingelbach of R2 and Jim Puckett presented on the two certification programs for Electronics Recyclers (along with auditor Kelley Keough of Greeneye).   Later, Travis Reed Miller of MIT presented on the use of Bayesian predictors to refine data, and Laura Bloodgood of US International Trade Office reported (without data) on the survey work on 900+ e-scrap firms.

The session with BAN E-Stewards and R2 was very amicable.  Sitting in the audience, I couldn't help but feel bad for having taken Puckett tiredly to task the day before in the blog.  They seemed to narrow the "disagreement" between the two programs down as follows:

1. E-Stewards is expensive.  And R2, while cheaper, is unsustainable (it needs to be more expensive).
2. BAN - a little unclearly, I thought - described their belief in evolving WITH a Basel Convention group.  The Basel Ban Amendment - not passed - should be incorporated in the standard because they are confident it will be passed.  The E-Steward position on export of goods for repair, while CLEARLY on the list of Annex IX "non-waste" activities, is that they should be held to a standard of a recent committee at Basel Meetings... ie not to International Law, but held to the amendment of the international law which the non-profit NGO promotes for a living).

This "adherence to promoted future law" of course is what frightens the USA away from Ratifying Basel Convention.   The USA Congress might agree with everything in a convention as written, and then Jim Puckett may make a presentation in Jakarta or Columbia, and the non-elected international group of attendees may vote that repair, allowed in the Convention, should no longer be allowed.  In that case the USA has passed a law which gives a non-elected international  interest group, effectively, regulatory power over USA companies.  UN Treaty 101.

From Vegetarian to Recycler

I was vegetarian in college.  It was not just about cows and pigs... it was about how demand for beef and pork led to the cropping down of rain forests to make pasture land.  I was avoiding beef to save rain forest critters.

Our purchases (demand) and waste (lost supply) have an impact far beyond our trash cans. When I learned about mining, I realized that the intrusion of mining operations and timber harvesters had an impact far beyond the forest consumption.  Purchases by the world's richest 5% of the population (1980) were paying for roads and infrastructure in the rain forests, and exponentially increasing purchases of bush meat or "bushmeat".

Killing and eating apes and monkeys and other exotic rain forest animals was sustainable when the world's population was about 500 million.  At 6+ billion, even if most of us swear off of it, a few ridiculous people will  order "endangered species platter" just to say they digested chimp flesh before they died.  Even if we run a campaign to increase the awareness of sustainability in Asia, and reduce the number of myths about special properties of organs from endangered species, we can plan on a certain number of ****heads.  If one percent of people are ****heads, then all you can control is access to the perversion, you cannot ever achieve all good people.

The access to bushmeat is roads.  If you build roads into the Congo river basin to harvest rare earth metals, other trade will follow the route.  When legitimate hunters, like ones I met in Cameroon, were first given guns, species were already endangered by the demands of earth's 1 billion population and 1% (1 million) ***heads.  But it was guns and roads, roads into the deepest parts of the forest , to mine coltan for cell phones and gold for circuit boards, or tin for "lead-free" solder, which broke the garden wall protecting bush wildlife.

In the capital of Yaounde, Cameroon, I could avert my eyes and walk on by the rugs of bushmeat.  But I knew that it was the "eaters" of hardwood and non-ferrous metals that brought the hunters to the mothers of these baby chimps.  And the West's contagion of consumption - consume, use, discard - is our most frightening export.


If you are a true recycler, your actions will mean more than vegetarianism for a lifetime.  Because if you are NOT a true recycler, and you don't recycle paper, metals and e-waste, then the gold and copper and tin and silver you "eat" opens the doors to the virgin forest.

I spent an amount of time meditating and trying to choose the best possible career.  If you want to make a difference towards sustainability, jewelry, electronics, and other industries consuming rare earth elements are the way to go. I'm fascinated in the potential for women's rights to reduce consumption of rare earth metals.  On the other hand, there are some tragic directions I see environmentalists taking.  Switching from toxics (like recycled content lead) to non-toxic rare metals (like tin and silver, the lead solder replacement) is probably the most tragic career pursuit an environmentalist can engage in.  Selling recycled mercury, diverted from well regulated landfills, to gold miners in the rain forest, is perhaps as bad.  Following that would be anything environmentalist pursuit that reduces participation (through higher costs or cynicism) in recycling... which we all need to be polite to one another in order to avoid.