Racketeering and Certification 4: "Framing" the Export Market

In the first blog in this series on Racketeering and Certification, we looked at actual problems in Africa (assassination of a journalist who reported on Racketeering). We then looked at the monetization of a so-called "charity" which claims to similarly expose problems -- for cash.  Pay for #EarthEye / "EarthEye"  and they will track your competitors, Pay for E-Steward Certification and get advance information about the same trackers. We looked at the charity's practice of sabotaging used devices (creating a problem) in order to gin up sales from paying clients (including commission-based profits, normally disqualifying for 501-c(3) "charities").

In part 4, let's look closer how this tracking works.  Do Basel Action Network's services cross the line from "watchdog" and become simple extortion, or racketeering? Is the problem they purport to solve one of their own making?

Jim Puckett "Frames" Africa

If a single computer monitor from this African Tech Sector shop went to Agbogbloshie days after Jim Puckett photographed it, we will bet it is the very one that Jim sabotaged. How more cringy can this "charity" get while "framing" the story?

Agblogblogshie: E-Waste Tsunami Covers Sodom-Gomorah in Understated Hell

Agbog-blog-shie Unplugged:  E-Waste Tsunami Covers Sodom & Gomorah in Understated Hell

Starved of facts and nuance, reports from African city of Accra - found on verge of catastrophe.

[BSNewsire, Accra, Ghana  April 1 2015]

Longtime a skeptic of "ewaste" dumping claims, WR3A Founder Robin Ingenthron arrived in Ghana last Sunday, and was shocked to find the situation far graver than he imagined.

"It began when our Delta Airlines flight was unable to land," said Ingenthron.   "We could see the junk televisions from 4,000 meters above Accra.   They were scattered in stacks, up to 90 feet high, on the runway and tarmac, and along the highway."

The Agbogbloshie dike, which separated greater Accra from the largest collection of electronic waste on the planet, had broken.    Teenagers could be seen pouring out of the Agbogbloshie fences, trying to regather the discarded computers and televisions.  But as fast as the kids worked to burn them, a tsunami of CRT televisions continued to spout through the gates, covering the streets of Accra and stalling traffic.

Ingenthron and other passengers were dropped via small white parachutes, like baby Dumbos, into the zoo of e-waste.  From the ground, the confessed electronics reuse kingpin came face to face with the toxic consequences of his "reuse excuse".

As reported in The Guardian, by Greenpeace, and at weather.com, "millions of tons" of obsolete electronics arrived in Agbobloshie each year.  At 34 units per ton, or 102 million TVs and monitors per year, 279,452 pieces had to be burned each day, keeping the 27 scrap boys who work in Abogbloshie on double shifts.  American households throwing away an average of 2.8 TVs per day are blamed for the mess.  Unfortunately, faced with the relatively small fires and lack of lighter fluid, the scrap boys had allowed a tinderbox of 10 decades of throwaways to amass.

Corrective and Preventative Action (CAPA)

Our company just went into an environmental "Surveillance Audit" for R2.  Some advice for people who are getting certified, or thinking about getting certified...

The temptation is to think that on the second audit, you've done this before.  You got the initial certification, you think that's the hard part.  No.   Joining the Army is the easy part.  Staying in the Army is the hard part.

When you think about it, there aren't too many economic incentives to keep someone out of a certification, whether it's E-Stewards, or R2, or ISO, etc.  What the company is signing up for is a process.  It's like joining a church, it's not about your past sins, it's about your commitment to being better.

What happened prior to our Surveillance Audit was that I took two trips to the Southwest (things are heating up at Retroworks de Mexico, despite the snow down there) and left people I trust in charge.  They have earned my confidence, as in confidence to do what I've trained everyone is our culture to do.

Efficiency, Good Work, Value, Accountability.  Get 'Er Done, combined with Know-How.

In that vein, everybody at the plant was motivated, without me telling them so, to make the place ship-shape.  We were proud of our company, and open to the audit with open arms.  A special clean up crew was assigned room by room to make sure everything was swept up and ship shape.

Well, we do "batch work" a few times a year.   Like we let the projection tubes build up until there will be enough of them to actually fill barrels with ethyl glycol.  If you do them as they come in, a few per day, you tie up more floor space with 1/8 full barrels which are actually more susceptible to spills than the projection tubes they were stored in.  So it makes sense, operationally, to store up 30 gaylords of the projection tubes when things are busy in the summer, and to keep people employed in the winter by draining them in a batch.

LCDs are similar.  In the first batch, you test working.  In the second batch, of the ones not working, you examine for capacitors and other "easily" repairable problems (for those in the know).  In the third batch, you leave for last the de-manufacturing of the busted-up-beyond-hope LCDs that need demanufacturing.

You are proud of the quality of your reuse.  We are led to believe, and it's true, that a lot of companies will sell the LCDs "as is" in a mixed lot.  Economically, you can "externalize" the cost of the LCD demanufacturing if you use the reuse value of the working and repairable to make the other LCDs tag along, as "toxics along for the ride".   So we haven't been doing that, we are proud to be tackling the hardest part of the work during the R2 winter surveillance audit.

So you've got a couple of people doing something new, something they aren't as experienced in, in the "batch work".  And you have a crew of eager clean up guys, circling around, trying to make the place look neat and orderly before the auditor arrives.

Crack.

That was the thin ice.

Hobsons Choice For the "E-Waste" Market

Take it or leave it.

When an E-Steward company, or a state or enterprise influenced by its negative campaign, is approached by an Egyptian, Indonesian, or Nigerian who wants to set up the fastest growing cities in on the planet with affordable internet, they have one choice.

They can either replace the bad capacitors themselves, replace the hard drives themselves, buy new laptop batteries themselves... etc. etc.   Or they can destroy them.

The fastest growing, highest use, internet market in the world, is in the cities of emerging markets.  Cairo, Jakarta, Lagos... and dozens of others with billions of people clamoring to learn, to be entertained, informed, and connected to their family, friends, and associates.  They are starving for things like affordable display devices.

When a Nigerian, Egyptian, or Indonesian electronics repairperson (a terrific job choice in emerging markets) wants to buy a Dell, HP, or Samsung computer from the USA, they have once choice:  buy from someone willing to sell to them, or go without.

The Watchdog, the Gatekeeper, the certifier wants to change that choice.  The E-Steward Program charges YOU money to not attack you for selling junk.  This changes the choice for suppliers / sellers in the USA.  I used to decide based on the demand - what people wanted to buy.  Now that's changed by the requirement that I pre-repair it, and the risk that if I do sell it, I may be attacked.    The effect has been to constrain the supply - the buyers choice of goods.

The Watchdogs say this is to protect the buyers from getting "junk".   The test of whether something is junk?  In the marketplace, it's called "the marketplace"... what people are interested in buying.  The buyers, the Geeks of Color, the Technicians, the "Good Enough Market".   The Watchdog, having convinced everyone that 80% of these decisions are bad ones, intervenes, and places themselves between the buyer and the seller.   A referee can be good - if the ref understands scoring and other rules of the game.

Under E-Stewards, the ref has raised the stakes on any missed calls, and so they design a rule to be something much easier to measure than willingness to buy (repeatedly).  They can't be bothered by the background checks on buyers and fair contract language that Fair Trade Recycling pursues.   Keep it simple e-Stupid.  "Fully Functional", "Tested Working", "Plug and Play"...  E-Stewards and PACE gave up when we sent them 20 page purchase orders with quantities, tests, sizes, buyer qualification rules and other parameters.   Too long to read.   To difficult.  So they created "tested working" as a standard.  Sounds good.  The effect was to remove sellers unable to test and buyers who preferred buying newer goods for repair (rather than old ones "working").

1:  Take the highest demand in the world
2:   Restrict what they can buy
3.  Profit!!

They get applause from the Anti-Gray Market Alliance members who make brand new product, who restrict the right to repair and use patent trolls and copyright extension to squeeze the largest demand in the world into the tiny space of brand new product.  Profit.

Fair Trade Recycling Challenge to University of Washington

Nailing shut the case for fair trade recycling of used electronics ("e-Waste").

We finally got this translated, thanks to Middlebury College faculty and alumns.



I'm working on getting a better quality copy.  It's nice to finally see the subtitles of the interviews with 'Batman and Robin'.

"...This combination of white guilt, and white paternalism...  And that the more I got to know these "Geeks of Color", these technicians, the more I realized - these guys are not only 'not doing anything wrong' - but they are actually the very best hope that these countries have."

MIT, Memorial University, Arizona State, Middlebury College, UVM, Champlain College, University of Arizona, University of Peru PC, University of Amsterdam, Universite Paul Cezanne, Cornell, Boston College...   Everyone looking into this finds that we are telling the truth, and that Basel Action Network is the one "dumping" (false accusations and defamation) on the poor.

They are parasites of the poor, and cowards for not responding to any of this.  The universities will be calling and asking questions about the 80%.  We have opened our doors.  We have nothing to hide, we have made mistakes and we are going to show them.  We do not pretend to be what we are not, and do not pretend to do things we cannot do.  If we take the pictures of Africans, we give them a name and a say.  Primitive?  You disgust me for using that term to describe A+ technicians replacing faulty capacitors, or original design manufacturers who own the patent on your touchscreen device.

DISGUST.   Basel Action Network is taking down reputable environmental organizations like Greenpeace and NRDC in their black hole of niggardly defamation.  They have had more than three years to respond to the false arrests/accusations of PT Imtech and Joseph Benson.

For the opinion to the contrary, I urge you to contact the University of Washington, and ask why they have joined a boycott of the Geeks of Color, and why they did not get a peer review from universities on the East and West Coasts who have listened to both sides and chosen Fair Trade Recycling as a standard.

Alex Credgington
University of Washington, Communications Manager
206-616-3412
ecredgin@uw.edu

Alex, if you want to meet the Chicas and tour our plant in Mexico, give me a jingle. For more background on the case why exports should not be defamed, read this piece in Motherboard, "Why We Should Ship our Electronic "Waste" to China and Africa".

We would love to have University of Washington's best scholars join the team, look inside, and tell us why we are wrong.   I challenge you to take your surplus materials, divide them into two equal piles, and we will draw straws.  Send one half to Total Reclaim (a friend and E-Steward), and one half to our Fair Trade Recycling partners at InterConnection in Seattle, allowing product to go to Retroworks de Mexico.

I have nothing to hide.  And I trust Charles at Interconnection and Jeff and Craig at Total Reclaim.  Do a whole mass balance, and see where the monitors, TVs, PCs, and hard drives wind up.   Memorial University may have funding to film the entire process, film the two loads, and escort them.  Oh, and Retroworks de Mexico, while it's in the poorest area of Sonora, IS IN AN OECD COUNTRY.   So no, it will not violate "international law" and whoever told you that... well, like I said, let's have a little "PEER REVIEW".

In 2013 I will close the case.  E-Stewards will either change, change management, change message, or go down in history as a racist, xenophobic period of environmentalist history.

My mom in the Ozarks described the first interracial marriage I heard about this way.

"She's very brave."

She must love him very much to marry despite the southern recoil that surrounded interacial marriage in the 1960s.    I am only brave enough to trade.

I don't want to speak on behalf of any of the researchers from any of the universities.  I just want to change the presumption of guilt, and protesting innocence and opening doors seems like the best way to go about that.   If the University of Washington wants to bring a camera and ask BAN what they should be aiming the camera at, that's fine by us.   We dropped our bucket where it was, and will lift as we climb.

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.

Why All Good Recyclers are Exporters.

There are many good recyclers, and we are all exporters. 
The purpose of certification is to "out" the liars, not to debate the outliers. 


During the past week (blogs below), I've written several essays concerning marketing themes which are "attacking the category".

Negative campaigning, also known more colloquially as "mudslinging", is trying to win an advantage by referring to negative aspects of an opponent or of a policy rather than emphasizing one's own positive attributes or preferred policies. In the broadest sense, the term covers any rhetoric in which one refers to one's opponent in an ad hominem manner. [ wikipedia 2012.02.08]

Negative imagery of competitors' export practices probably accounts for "80% of advertising" for ewaste recyclers (a statistic I just manufactured... see how easy it is for Americans to make things - up?)

Export policy is important, it does matter.  Below are five distinct export categories, and the niches they serve.   How we manage and certify the first four will help us all to control the 5th (see post "Ewaste Travel in Scrap Metal" 2010).   Mixing CRT glass and mercury bulbs into bales of scrap metal is one dumping problem, but ship captains stranded with cargo refused at port is another cause of the same "export for dumping" problem.   Basically, there are five ways for your "e-waste" to get from Here to There.

FIVE CATEGORIES OF E-WASTE EXPORTS

1.  Export No Intact Unit Category:   Some of us feel safer exporting raw materials only, and market the "no intact unit" standard as an option.  These companies attract business from OEMs concerned with reuse (market cannabalization), counterfeiting, or the "grey markets" somewhere in between.  It's a legitimate recycling category.  These companies represent an excellent choice, for example, for an OEM with faulty parts taken back under warranty that they don't want redistributed.  These recyclers export bales of steel, plastic, copper, aluminum, and circuit boards, sold openly on the commodities market.  (slideshow of China's metal recycling companies, which buy shredded material for hand sorting - The Atlantic Monthly 2008)

2.  Export of Tested Working Category:   Some of us sell to retail markets, such as schools or direct retail shops, which are not in the repair business and are willing to pay more for something "fully functional" and "tested working".  The recyclers who sell to the direct-reuse market tend to wipe hard drives, reinstall MAR licenses, and do other things to ensure their exports are what the buyer ordered.  (Slideshow of Egyptian repair / direct reuse markets, 2008)

3.  Export for Repair and Refurbishing Category:   Within the remote corners (83% of the world), there are mind-blowing repair and remanufacturing companies.  Some of these began as contract manufacturers (e.g. CRT factories) and performed warranty repairs as well as assembly.  Some have turned to full-fledge cores refurbishers, creating thousands of jobs in emerging markets, taking back things like old CRT tubes or smallish LCDs and recutting and re-vamping them.  They make things like monitor-television-DVD combos, which are sold in vast quantities to people earning $3,000 per year, who cannot afford to buy all 3 separately.  They tend to be very picky, but not about things like 120 volt power supplies... whether the power supply works or not, it's getting replaced for sale in a 220 volt country.  It's a very legitimate category.  The fact they buy non-working power supplies as well as working power supplies is evidence that they are the opposite of primitive.  Slides of the factories I've visited are available here.

Redemtech Explains (Attacks) R2

Singapore Internet Cafe

Basel Action Network says that my criticism has been mean-spirited, sometimes "ad hominem" attacks.  My friends see this blog as a purely defensive force.  If BAN and E-Stewards stops with the attacks on refurbishers, a la California Compromise, we could do great things together.  But classifying all 83% of the world in "non-OECD" nations as primitive wire burning victims is just wrong.


Here's a case in point.  E-Stewards are mounting their own blogs.  Here is one, sponsored by Redemtech of Ohio, by professional writer Carol Baroudi.  I'm not attacking Redemtech here.   But using Carol's own words, by agreeing with them, are we attacking her? Or is this a ricochet wound?


Redemtech is an electronics recycling company in Ohio.  They are an E-Steward certified "ewaste" company.   Bob Houghton, the CEO, has been in the business for a long time, and is a respected IT recycler.  This is not an attack on Redemtech... but this is the only way to reply.  When Redemtech started a blog, I left some comments.  I don't recall the comments ever being approved by moderators.  So, I'll try to get my point across here.

Redemtech blogger Carol Baroudi sounds off on R2, EPA's "Responsible Recycler" certification, and why E-Stewards is superior.   Note the tone...

First and foremost – No non-functioning equipment is ever exported. Got that? Never. R2 makes no such claim.

Got it.

This is certainly true.  I don't think anyone disputes that.  What is disputed is whether an E-Steward's working P2s are somehow superior to the P4's with replaceable capacitors which Wistron or another Asian subcontractor wants to buy.    Or whether the USA creates more jobs shredding those P4s rather than selling them back to the company that makes capacitors, for 5 times more money.  What is disputed is whether the same factory that takes back product for repair under warranty can also buy the exact same computer at surplus and do the same thing.  E-Stewards, according to the quote, considers warranty repair and manufacturer-takeback to be a crime.

There are more examples of "non-functioning" but good exports.  Empty ink cartridges for refilling ... no one claims those are "functioning"... there are lots of things in the "cores" business, for which "fully functional" is not an important criterion.   And it's all legal under Basel Convention Annex IX.  Lots of OEMs want us to shred the ink cartridges, rather than refill them, because they sell new ones for $20-30 each.  Maybe that's why some OEMs are the biggest contributors to E-Stewards.

Redemtech shipment

CRT monitors.  Why is "non-functional" so important to Carol, when it's not what the buyers are screening out?  I have personally seen Redemtech containers being unloaded in Jahor Bahru, Malaysia, when I went to visit a buyer there.   The Redemtech CRTs may well have been "tested working".   But the buyer's specifications were not "tested working".  The buyer didn't want "working" R4 tubes (trinitron).  But the buyer would be happy to receive other tubes that did not have a working power supply, because that's what the buyer does - refurbishes tubes.

These Redemtech PCs are being reused, and Redemtech should be as proud of trading with the Malaysians in this photo as I am.  If they refuse a tested working 21" tube because it's too big, or a 17" because of a surplus backlog or raster test, and pay $10 for the others... how could they be burning them?  It's obvious without visiting them.  But I did visit them, and was impressed.

I am the one who raised "warranty repair" as an issue, thinking that might cause people to think a little bit about who the contract manufacturers were.   I worked with ones which did both warranty returns and purchased refurbish-able ones on their own.

I thought that might really bring people closer together, explaining how warranty repair is the same factory as purchase certain (but not all) "non-functioning equipment".

But it's true.  First and foremost, warranty returns are non-functioning equipment.   They are made almost universally in factories which are not OECD.  Redemtech asks if we "got that"?

Got it.

When my company ships to the factory, we read the specifications in the PO, we remove what they want us to remove (including working equipment which is in surplus, or low demand, or wrong size/spec), and we get a feedback or QA/QC report explaining exactly how well our staff prepared what they shipped, and whether any of it was outside what they needed.  We had the factory inspected to meet R2 processes, and as a result of our contract, they became a CRT glass processor, taking back bad ones from the places they sold good ones (think needle exchage or "computers for clunkers").

So my problem with E-Stewards?  I think we can agree:

First and foremost – No non-functioning equipment is ever exported. Got that? Never. R2 makes no such claim.

So I haven't said or implied Redemptech is a bad company.  I think they are a great company.  I just happen to think that the people we both sold to in Malaysia had a great company, too.  And from in depth, face to face meetings, I am pretty sure I know what they need from us to make the world better.

What I don't understand is what the heck the factories Redemtech and I both sold to have to do with the primitive child photos in burning ditches which E-Stewards displays on its website.  Mr. Ong said "hi", by the way, when he gave me a ride across the bridge to his home in Singapore.

E-Waste Made Simple. Logo Extortion

"It's as if recoiling from images of poverty is becoming equated with compassion."


That quote was one of my most powerful insights in 2011, crystalized after reading the December Bloomberg piece on fairtrade cotton and Victoria's Secret.  It's a powerful human impulse to harness, and Bloomberg reporter  Cam Newton (not the NFL player) is not the only "parasite of the poor".  Another report came out yesterday from our friends at BAN, loaded with allegation, evidence, and a solution for your e-waste angst, dissonance, panic, unease, discomfort, and fear.  The witch doctor in Seattle has a Copyrighted Logo cure for your toxic juju.


It's the same parasitic business model, harnessing our cognitive risk, unease, and good intentions (or fear of blackmail via public watchdog "outing") without sharing a dime with the poor people used in the process.  Read BAN.org's press release / email. Then look for evidence to support their allegation. 

But what most people don’t know is that most companies that call themselves electronics recyclers are not really recyclers at all.  They are global e-waste dumpers. The vast majority of companies and organizations touting themselves as environmentally friendly “recyclers” are just selling this highly toxic scrap to brokers, who then ship to developing countries in African and Asia where all this waste is broken down in highly dangerous and destructive ways, creating what 60 Minutes calls “the most toxic places on earth” (seewww.ban.org/photogallery).

Most people, Most recyclers,  Most Toxic Place.  Vast Majority...  Hyperbole accusations are a bad sign. The NGO doesn't know what it is talking about, and is making "facts" up as it goes along.  Providing false evidence is the first signal that someone is either mistaken or has an angle.

Responsible Recycler's R2 Pledge Haiku

We need an audit
To prove we don't dump e-waste   

Recycle fairly.

Ultimately, the test of whether E-Stewards or R2 Certified Recyclers is the right guarantee will not depend on photos of children burning waste.  It will not depend a company's unwillingness to pay huge fees to a political group which defames the best and brightest nerds in the business.

ethical ewaste 

my dirty little secret
we traded with geeks.

Frank Zappa On Certification: R2 or E-Steward

"Certification from one source or another seems to be the most important thing to people all over the world. A piece of paper from a school that says you’re smart, a pat on the head from your parents that says you’re good or some reinforcement from your peers that makes you think what you’re doing is worthwhile. People are just waiting around to get certified." - Frank Zappa

"The richest people in the world aren’t particularly smart or happy. And the happiest people in the world aren’t particularly smart or rich.… "

"If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library. "

Without the internet, would Frank Zappa ever have been joined unto Wax Tailor?  Ceritified Wax Tailor video below.