Should I keep going after Alexander Clapp? Or just accept his Waste Wars surrender? Nameless, Faceless Buyers to Him are My Peeps.

Nobody at last week's E-Waste World Conference in Frankfurt, Germany, mentioned Alexander Clapp or his "Waste Wars" book.

Jim Puckett was there, refused to speak about it.

Clapp cites me in 2006 as a source, but won't take my Linkedin invite, let alone speak about what I learned in the 19 years since (20 actually, since my 2006 quote was already dated).

I've got a lot of interesting new stuff to talk about. It's interesting how non-interested Alexander is, both in the sense of his lack of interest in the truth and African and Asians lack of interest in his racial profiling of their Tech Sectors.

Hopefully one of Alex's family members who wrote reviews of his book on Amazon (and transparently didn't hide their family relation) read this, by searching for him.

He's a total fraud. But probably unintentionally... probably meant well, probably yearns, as I do, to be an environmentalist.  But he didn't interview any buyers... they - the market - is nameless, faceless. But I really wish he had the guts to talk to me, like Oli and Adam and even Kevin McElvaney did. Clapp is the biggest intellectual coward of any person I've tried to confront. Sad. 

Intercon Sentencing, Defamation, and Charity vs Charity Grudge Match

Chicago's Hall of Mirror Balls

Several people heard a "whoosh" sound while reading the April Fools Day Blog.  The BAN vs ERA of Canada - two recognized tax charities - defamation lawsuit was dropped about the same time.  But ERA's leader Bojan Paduh (a refugee of Bosnia during the 1990s civil war) is someone I got to know as a result of the lawsuit.  His anger at BAN is absolutely seething in a way I have not heard since Brian Brundage sued the NGO 6 years ago. (For April Fool reference, see email from BAN at bottom).

I told Bojan that I had indeed, more than once, considered a defamation lawsuit against BAN. Brian Brundage (like Bojan) had asked if I was interested in joining class action (shared legal cost) approach.  I spoke to an attorney about it in 2012, when Basel Action Network told a Chicago Newspaper that I was "lying through my teeth" and that the "state of the art" reuse and recycling facilities I had visited and eyewitnessed in Asia were a "myth". According to the reporter, BAN warned him against even listening to me, stating I was mentally ill and that everyone in the recycling community knew it.

"Most libel cases are filed by private citizens. There are reasons for that. Private citizens have a much lower bar to hurdle. They have to prove that the statement was factually wrong, that it was published, that it referred to them and damaged their reputation—and that somebody is responsible for it. That the person who made the statements was negligent." - Guy Bergstrom, "To Sue or Not to Sue: Libel"

Now BAN has learned a thing or two from their experience paying attorneys to defend them in defamation and liable lawsuits.  The 2012 attack on me was certainly explicit and personal, not against a company and not a vague "opinion".  They explicitly warned a reporter not to talk to me, and gave reasons why I was not credible.  Because BAN had to take the unusual step of apologizing and retracting their statements, I get contacted a lot for advice from others wanting to sue BAN. But they have learned to be a little more cautious in some cases (like using the term "likely illegal" against ERA, instead of "illegal", as they claimed in 2012).

Instead of suing, I accepted BAN's apology, which was run in the same Chicago Patch newspaper. I was not really satisfied with the apology, because it did not remove the insult or racial profiling I originally objected to. I was not the person being defamed, it was the Tech Sector overseas, the poor people who make a lot more money repairing rich peoples stuff than they can make repairing poor peoples stuff.

Apology From Craig Lorch and Jeff Zirkle - Entrapped By BAN

Last week, E-Scrap News and Recycling Today ran an Op-Ed Letter and story about the upcoming sentencing of two electronics recycling company owners from Seattle, Washington.

Craig Lorch and Jeff Zirkle's letter starts with their background as young freon recovery do-gooders, who got into fluorescent lamp recycling, and then into "E-Waste", becoming the largest TV, computer, and electronics scrap recycling company in the NW USA.

Open Letter: Learn from Total Reclaim’s mistakes

Got a call from Craig a few days before the letter, and we had a pretty long talk about the situation. Had a shorter exchange with Jeff just afterwards. Around New Years, I had talked to Charles Brennick, another Seattle area electronics guy spiked by the GPS tracking scandal in Washington. And I've been in regular contact with Bojan Paduh, founder of Canada's ERA, who is in a defamation lawsuit against Basel Action Network for their report describing GPS device trackers they put into electronics dropped off at his site in Canada.  I was a paid expert witness for a fraud case on e-waste recycling in Chicago last summer.  So I have a lot of perspective to share.

It is an ugly business to grandstand, or use a friend's painful prison sentence news story as a soapbox to pontificate on environmental policy.  But in some of these cases, I've been given a green light.

Let's start by acknowledging that fraud is bad.

Let's finish by talking about Total Reclaim's biggest mistake.

10 Years Of Good Point Recycling Blogs: What's Been Learned?

Ten years ago, most of the mainstream press in Europe and the USA had accepted the cartoon thesis that if electronic waste is expensive to recycle, that shipments of used electronics to Asia, Africa and South America were to avoid those expenses. At least, 80% of the time.

We took that on here, before anyone else would touch the controversy with a 10 meter pole. Here's a retrospective on what was, and still is, relevant in the Good Point Recycling Blog.

When poor people are paying for something (including transportation), it is not "because" the rich are willing to ship it.

We demonstrated that with the "Big Secret Factories" and 60 Wasted Minutes blogs. The sea containers of CRT monitors headed for Asia were never, ever full of large CRT televisions, even though large CRT TVs had more copper and costed more to recycle. In fact, the purchase orders did even accept Sony Trinitron 17" desktop monitors or screen-burned desktop CRTs or pre-VGA.  When someone is paying you $10 each for something specific, and refusing to accept other similar CRTs even if you pay them, it probably has nothing to do with (ahem) "rice paddies".

Brad Collis [CC BY 2.0]

Smoke Screen in Africa: German Photography Needs Self-Ctrl-X

WR3A Photo January 2018

One of the most tiresome themes in the "eyewitness" reporting on African recycling are accounts of smoke from burning wire.  It's definitely one of the most photogenic activities at Agbogbloshie.

Sure, Sasha. Agbogbloshie e-waste oft goes unmentioned - for minutes at a time.

The anecdotal wire burning in Agbogbloshie is a product of underemployment and boredom. But if you ask people in the recycling community how much e-waste wire burning contributes to African urban air pollution (smog), you find it gets mentioned a wee too often.

Where smoke comes from:

• Cars and Trucks
• Diesel Generators
• Charcoal Stoves
• Smelters
• Tire Burning

I asked German photographer Kai Loeffelbein a polite question on twitter about the photo below - from Agbogbloshie.  No response.  I presume he has done just a little bit of background research, enough to know not to climb in the ring.  He's going to ring the bell and get his cash from the publisher for a titillating expose, and let's see if a dime goes to Ibrahim, Muhammed, Awal, Razaq, Yaro and their pals.

Kai, notice how everyone at the largest dump on Earth is on first name basis?

So let's talk about smoke.  The photographers like to tell us that's how their work is benefitting the Africans - by saving them from health effects of burning electronics.

5 Bells: Blogger Declares "E-Waste Hoax is Dead"

Shaba Kahamba, the Artist formerly known as Prince, and the E-Waste Hoax are dead.*

The second of the list, Prince, the incredibly famous purple dancer, was found passed out in an elevator, and declared dead at age 57.  Shaba Kahamba, the Congolese Soukous bassist legend, died peacefully in retirement in the Netherlands on Tuesday... in somewhat undeserved obscurity.   And the E-Waste Hoax will be remembered only by its silence.  There is no "correction" forthcoming from BBC, Economist, NYT, NPR, etc.  But I predict no further national or international coverage of any "e-Waste" emergency this Earth Day, one year after the news "jumped the shark" in declaring a small scrap metal pile in Western Africa to be the largest E-Waste Dump on Earth.

After a decade of NGO hype, what makes me think that "ewastegate" is over?  And not with a clang, but a whimper?

There may be some residual stories about "e-waste exports" cropping about here and there, but mostly they are coming from rank amateurs like Kevin McElvaney, people in their 20s with a camera. But the source of the hoax statistics is running out of funding, and not a decade too soon.

*homage to "the Oxford Comma"... Shaba K and TAFKAP are two different people.

Rank The Environmental Atrocity: Is Fraud Visible from Outer Space?

Multiple Choice:  If you could correct one thing, to protect the planet, sustainability, endangered species, and the planet, what would you choose?

• Hard rock metal mining?

• Mining Indonesian coral islands for tin (to replace recycled lead batteries in electric solder)?

• Diverting Interpol enforcement from Ivory poaching, to arrest African internet cafe investors?

• A pile of inert silicate leaded flux (slag), sitting by a smelter for 80 years?

• A pile of CRT tubes, diverted from reuse, sitting in a warehouse in Yuma?

To the degree the last one belongs on the list, it's because of fraud.   The first fraud was BAN and SVTC telling California that the CRT monitors being shipped in 2002 were destined for dumps. They were being purchased by SKD factories.

The second fraud was, again, BAN and SVTC telling California that diverting those CRTs to "recycling" companies represented international law or environmental progress.

The third fraud was allegedly committed by the cathode ray tube recycling company ("Dow Management" in Yuma) which evidently took money for the tubes, stuck them in a warehouse, and ran.


Our war should be on fraud.

First do no harm.  Be true to thine own self.  Truth is not conservative or liberal, blue or red or green, truth is transparent, and only environmental and recycling systems based on truth will be sustainable.

(By the way, I had access to other 'close up' photos with children in them, but believe it contributes to poster child exhaustion, we all need to de-escalate the emotional button-pushing)

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?

E-Waste Ghost Tonnage: A Vicious (re)Cycle

How Is End-of-Life E-Waste Tonnage Reincarnated in Neighboring States?

In 2009, I wrote a blog about e-waste "Ghost Tonnage" in state mandated CRT and e-Waste Recycling Programs.  A trade publication spotted it and asked to re-run it.   I declined, as the causes and effects were a little confused at that point.  This was not a simple case of Kramer driving New York deposit bottles to Michigan.

Unfortunately, "fraud" is not particularly rare in recycling businesses.  Yesterday's post about the conviction of the Colorado "Executive" company is not the largest.  The Sacramento Bee had a front page story about Arizona recyclers turning TVs into California for "redemption",using CA addresses "freed up" by exporting monitors for reuse against SB20 terms.  A new report by Lauren Roman of Transparent Planet (my company is one of ten sponsors) scratches the surface of ewaste funding conspiracy theories, about stockpiled CRT glass, and market capacity for the glass.  (I only had 48 hours to comment but Lauren has promised it's a "living document". I will make a separate blog to crib the report... it's good in a glasnosty way to start the discussion, but bears the fingerprints of agendas, and some of the people NOT interviewed in the report will need a chance to respond to "stockpiling" accusations).

A recycler who declares an abandoned car ("A-Waste") to be "covered electronics" in a state program (it may have a radio and electronics, after all) certainly gets a lot of pounds in a short time, and can sell those tons to an OEM rather cheaply.  And a recycler who turns a ton of TVs for reimbursement by two different OEM sponsors has doubled not just his profits, but his entire revenue.   Clearly, anyone getting paid twice for the same recycling, or claiming auto scrap as a "covered device", plays mumblety peg with mug shot photographers.

The OEM may appear complicit in accepting cheap tons to meet a state stewardship mandate.  Because the volumes are so high, recyclers are forced to partner with consolidators, takebacks, and haulers - no recycler can get 10 million pounds directly from consumers and residents.   My company cleaned up abandoned TVs from the sides of roads in Rhode Island, "green up" days in Vermont, and abandoned lots in Massachusetts... can we know for sure?

California is a state run program.  But in the Stewardship Programs discussed in Lauren's report (she omits Massachusetts because the law came from executive branch order rather than legislation, even though MA has stockpiled glass) the state has created the obligation for the OEM to pick up a specific number of devices from homeowners in the state - a numbe derived via... some kind of state employee number crunching...  the ouija board tells OEMs how many TVs and computers they need to fetch, or pay fines for.

So the manufacturer in faraway Asia is given a specific number of pounds of electronics they must "get recycled" in Minnesota.  A number that is not even in metrics.  And if they don't pick up that number, they pay a fine.   Which recycler do we expect them to choose - one who is cheap and has "lots" of pounds, or one who is expensive and struggles to avoid the fine?

How to Reward or Man-Handle Reporters?

The Journalist's heroin is the byline.  When the journalists themselves become emotionally or physically involved in a story, it's fodder for awards and support of fellow interviewers and cameramen.

Gold Scrap Buyer Pushes Journalist - My joke Polk 

I just saw the interview of the journalist who worked on this story (NY Channel 4 NBC Local News) on a crackdown on gold scrap buyers in the NY area.  They were accused by regulators of not displaying their prices and scales, and probably some of them were being "shady" with consumers who don't know scrap prices.  Hey, not as bad as buying from crackheads who break into homes. But these are typically used by people in some desperate situation, selling jewels from a departed relative, or trying to raise money for surgery, and the consumer has to rely on the "professional".  We need regulation and investigation.

As a former regulator, I also understand that while the real problem is burglary and theft, that you pressure the regulated if you crack down on something lower key - advertising and buying.   It's similar to the "no graffiti" policy, if you enforce that little things are done right fewer big things go wrong.

Anyway, from one of these rather routine local enforcements on gold and silver scrap buyers in New York, a "NBC Local News Team" decided to go Scott Pelley 60 Minutes on their asses and take a camera to the scrap guy's store, put his storefront on camera as a centerpiece to the "fraud" headline.

And the younger scrap guy pushed the cameraman's camera into his face.  Sound familiar?

infamous "tidy little shop" purporting to be "other side" balance

It could happen anywhere...

The interview I just saw had this video footage in the background, but the interview was really of the reporter.  (uh-oh).   He describes how it's normal, businessmen should expect to be interviewed, you don't like it but it's how the game is played.  He described how his cameraman is his homie and how he spends more time with the cameraman than he does with his family, and how an eye socket could have been injured by the push of a camera, and how police came to the scene and a report of physical assault on the cameraman is now added to the enforcement on price display and scale visibility.

I'm not saying that this is the same as CBS in Guiyu.  But what I saw in the CBS 60 Minutes story on computer monitor recycling in Hong Kong was familiar in this NY Channel 4 news story.  And the reaction of the scrap dealers to having news cameras in their lots is familiar.

Two years ago I followed up my critique above with a more detailed shot-by-shot dissection of the CBS 60 Minutes Wasteland episode.   I never get a call back from CBS news crew, who took an hour of my time doing background on the story.   The lesson I took is that when the reporter has a choice between a story which is much more complicated and less exciting but more accurate than the one he set out on, or a story where he/she is a "hero" defending an assault on "their own" cameraman with footage that proves the businesspeople have "something to hide", that the latter story is easier and will appear "above the fold", so to speak.

The real "tidy little shops" fixing used electronics

What I do not understand is the decision to give a George Polk Award to these people.  Well... I do understand it.  The awards people didn't know anything about the SKD (semiknockdown) factories in Asia which were buying back CRT monitors for refurbishing to new-in-box condition for sale to Egypt, India, and Africa.   The Polk is a JOURNALIST award - that is, a reward to a single individual who is chosen to symbolize bravery, integrity and courage in journalism.  The Peabody Award is different, it recognizes a journalism organization (so I understand).

In either case, if it is discovered that a journalist did something in Guiyu China which was actually about as brave as NBC Channel 4 local news on gold and silver scrap buying, and that the exotic locale of China and Americans willingness to believe that the bottom of China's normal curve is "the truth" and that the factories which actually purchased and refurbished most of the monitors in Hong Kong harbor were defamed in the process...

Here is the formula:

• Ingredient 1:  Something people don't understand completely (plastic, circuit boads, display devices) but which they feel familiar with, feel first hand experience with.

• Ingredient 2:  Cognitive Risk word, "fraud" or "toxic" or "children" or "sex"

• Ingredient 3:  Reporter with microphone shot in "exotic" locale, especially surrounded by brown skinned people in physical poverty.

Presto:  All the ingredients for a journalistic excellence award.   And as journalism rewards this, it breeds copycats.  The "we buy gold scrap in NY" expose above.  The "Fair Trade Cotton Victoria's Secret" where photos of the "mud hut" of the worker demostrate the "bravery" of the reporter.   The trembly-voiced Mike Daisy surrounded by ficticious machine guns at (the wrong) contract assembly plant (he was in Shenzhen, the iPhone worker poisoning happened at a different Chinese factory, literally hundreds of miles away, he was stealing a story from another reporter).

Idea... Hey, there are lots of reporters in China, working for cheap wages.   Maybe we can mass-produce these stories?  I'm thinking of the South Park Family Guy Manatee method, combine ju-ju technology words (polymer, flame retardant, megahertz, microwave) with a cognitive risk word (cancer, uterus, babies, negro), put a reporter in an untrained PR environment (shopping mall, scrap yard, battlefield) and voila.  If people with consciences care about it, it's difficult to understand, it has "profit" and "fraud" and "sex" and "race" ingredients, and a human nature ("get offa my lawn") reaction from the engaged businesspeople, we could go to town, and start minting these Peabody and Polk and Pulitzer puppies.

Scrap Metal Fraud: Diary of Export Heart Attack

Dear Diary,

This is a story of a scrap dealer, who has to make payroll while meeting Responsible Recycler standards in an international marketplace.  This is all true, all happening in the past two weeks.

China 2005

Monday... We are still dealing with the aftermath of a missed wire transfer from a USA client.   We took the wire (about $60K) for granted and wrote some big checks against it.   Someone at the sender's local bank claimed to be asleep at the switch (though I think it should be investigated whether the money was withdrawn from the client account on the day of the wire, and the bank was kiting it for 24 hours).   Bank fraud can mean the bank's fraud.  We were hit with about $1600 in bounced check fees and panicked phone calls with our own payees.  I took screen shots of our account showing the wire was late and the correspondence from the client sending us the money that their account had cleared it the day earlier.

Rachael, our CFO, makes the case that the wires are outrageous, taking $20-30 from the sender client and then $18 at our receiving bank... wonders whether we should use more paper checks to avoid the accumulated bank fees.

Tuesday:   To make up for the panic among our suppliers for the bounced checks the previous Friday (one of our loads was actually held and not unloaded until we sent another wire to cover the bad check, truck idling), we issue more checks to get the payables under 30 days.  To do that I need to sell some of the $150K in scrap metal that we have processed in the building.

Wednesday:  We re-double sort the green board to eliminate the "jelly bean" boards (yellow, purple, red, and blue boards typically made in China and typically having much less gold content), to get a better price than our last load sent to the R2 compliant buyer.   That takes extra staff time, and it's part of the reason we have so much metal value in inventory that I now desperately need to cash out.  The high grade printed circuit boards had been processed by our USA buyer for sale to Umicore or Boliden in Belgium or Dowa in Japan... it takes 90-120 days for our buyer to get the reconciliation on their load, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

They evidently got some loads back with way less gold than they expected and were told that the culprit was "jelly bean" boards.  They factored their loss over average loads going forward, and my company took a $6,000 hit.  They admitted they didn't know whose boards had how many jelly beans, it was an average spread out to cover their losses.

New Allegations by Basel Action Network vs. Indonesia

As regular readers know, I believe the biggest environmental outrage of the decade was Basel Action Network's accusation in 2010 of a large scale computer monitor takeback and refurbishing factory (PT Imtech of Semarang, Indoenesia) of being a "hazardous waste" polluter.   BAN refused to ever acknowledge that the factory was permitted, ISO9000, ISO14001, had put glass-to-glass washing equipment for incidental breakage, and was providing sustainable recycling and reuse jobs in the tsunami-ravaged nation.

I don't have any details about the accusation made late yesterday against the Netherlands and other exporters of "e-waste" to Jakarta.  It may or may not be  one of the Indonesian Techs we interviewed on camera.

We do know for sure that BAN has falsely accused people in the past, and has a pattern of not admitting it or explaining themselves.  BAN made false statements about the 2010 rejection (BAN said in writing that the Indonesian government had opened the containers and discovered hazardous waste, but the Indonesian government said that they were "notified" by BAN that the containers has HW and returned them unopened).  We got independent verification from Port of Boston officials (where the 2010 containers were returned) that the seals on the containers had not been opened.

We cannot defend anyone involved in today's case, as we have done no more business in Indonesia.   Perhaps the "e-waste" is hazardous, I really don't know.

Here is video and slides of a factory I do know was in Jakarta, where todays containers were seized.  They refurbished computers into like-new condition and sold them in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Iran and other nations which were hungry for affordable internet.  When we visited, they were refurbishing 5,000 computer devices per DAY and employed hundreds of people.  Yes, that's 5,000 units per DAY.

I approached BAN about a Compromise two years ago... hoped that BAN would look at these pictures and perhaps feel a little remorse, and be a little gentler about the concept of Fair Trade Recycling.   Jim was civil, but said his hands were tied, as he believed that the export SHOULD be made illegal, even if it was not, event if no pollution resulted.  His theory was that rich people will always abuse poor people, and stopping the trade between rich nations and poor would result in poor nations "leapfrogging" into better technology.   While he admitted it wasn't actually illegal under Basel Convention, that for consistency he had to oppose it because he objected to that part of the Basel Convention (Annex IX).

BAN's solution to me was that Basel Convention Annex IX B1110 (which makes this activity LEGAL) should be amended by a Basel Ban Amendment (so that even if legal now, it would become illegal), and that the factory should buy worn out stuff from poor countries instead of the 3 year old equipment they like to refurbish from rich countries.  Then BAN said that they would meet the demand for internet by selling "tested working" and "fully functional" computers from E-Stewards, eliminating the need for refurbishing jobs in Indonesia.  We wonder how close to 5,000 working units per day their E-Steward shredding companies have come.

So in the past the NGO has committed fraud.  In the past the NGO created a hoax that the computers at the dump in Ghana were recently imported (no evidence of that).  We'll see whether their history of false accusations is even brought up by Treehugger, Grist, Huffington Post or Good.

The European and American press are cowards for not uncovering the money that goes from planned obsolescence interests into this shady, reckless, racist organization in Seattle whose job it is to chase reuse entrepreneurs out of the closet.  This Seattle NGO organization does nothing for the environment.   The biggest shame of the environmental movement is that they continue to circulate the accusations and stories and never lift a finger to investigate the truth about the people who have committed no crime except to be geeks of a different color.

Basel Action Networks press release is below.  Maybe this time they are right.  A broken clock does that twice per day.  If the formula is to accuse every geek of color who buys surplus property from rich nations a polluter, they may eventually get one... because they have millions of people to profile.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 113 Containers of Toxic Waste Arrives at Indonesian Port Groups Call for Ratification of Basel Ban and Crackdown on Global Dumping Jakarta, Indonesia, February 3 2012 – On the heels of massive quantities of toxic wastes arriving at the Jakarta Tanjung Priok Port last week, environmental groups led by Indonesia Toxics-Free Network, the Basel Action Network, Ban Toxics, and BaliFokus condemned the illegal trade and urged world governments that have not already done so to ratify the Basel Ban Amendment and to enforce the Basel Convention as a matter of urgency.

Fact Check on E-Waste Recycling: 11 POINTS

Do exports of electronics need to be handled with care?  Yes. Should electronics recyclers be certified?  Absolutely.   Professional recycling companies are proud to have the bar raised, and for standards for reuse and recycling to be level.  With that said, should the Green-Thompson Bill banning "ewaste exports" be passed?  Here are the facts.

1.  Are 80% of USA's "EWASTE" exported to non-OECD Nations?

Non-OECD nations represent 83% of the world population.  While there has never been a source for the "80%" export statistic, it is logical that 83% of the buyers in the world could represent 80% of the market for USA goods.

2.  Are most USA electronics scrapped in primitive recycling yards, creating pollution?

No.  The largest importers by volume of items like computer monitors and desktops are the contract manufacturing factories which originally made them.  Most of these are located in, or owned by, Taiwan based companies such as Foxconn, Proview, Wistron, and BenQ.   They take back items under warranty for repair, but also take back non-warranty items if they can be refurbished for reuse.  The other big overseas markets are for raw materials - plastic, copper, aluminum, zinc, lead, steel, etc.  Those are the same markets for everyone, and whether the used electronics are shredded first, or not, does not change the recycling outcome.

3.  Do most of the European and USA electronics shipped to Africa wind up burned in primitive conditions?

No.  In depth research provides concrete evidence that 85% of the exports to Ghana (the site filmed by BAN.org and Greenpeace) are reused.  Only 30% of the electronics imported to Ghana are brand new.   African buyers station inspectors to carefully screen items they are buying in the country of export in order to make sure shipping costs (80% of the cost of the item) are not spent on junk.  The percentage of product not reused is similar to the percentage of store returns at Wal-Mart in the USA.


4.  Are e-Waste reuse and recycling operations a significant source of pollution?

No.   By far most of the pollution in Asia, Africa, and Latin America comes from the mining of raw materials to make brand new electronics.  In comparison, the percentage of toxics released by repair and elective upgrades is practically not even measurable.

5.  Will a ban on e-Waste exports help poor people?

No.  The proposed bans on e-waste exports will harm poor people.  The emerging democracies in Africa and the Middle East have made connections via internet.  The cost of new display devices (monitors) is more than a month's pay, out of reach for most Egyptians, Libyans, Syrians, etc.  The alternatives to recycling jobs are mining for metals like tin, tantalum, and tungsten in rain forests, and mining for lead in Kabwe.  No reputable professional has ever said reuse or recycling is worse than mining... even those who would ban recycling concede the mining in Africa and China is far worse.

6.  Do a significant number of USA recyclers mix "toxic along for the ride" with exports?

According to interviews with importers and technicians in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, bans on export in California, Oregon and Washington resulted in a "sellers market" for used electronics, and quality has decreased whenever good people refuse to trade or ban trade with geeks in developing markets.  While the quality of loads went down, the cost of shipping (especially to South America and Africa) generally makes it impossible to ship more than 30% junk.

7.  Where do the electronics shown in photos at dumps like Guiyu and Agbogbloshie come from?

By all accounts, most of the scrap shown in primitive recycling yards in China comes from China, and most of the scrap in the dumps in Ghana has been used productively for years in Ghana.  Photos by organizations like Greenpeace clearly show (in their own footage) nice black televisions taken out of sea containers, and show very old white computers, in small numbers, at the dump.  Greenpeace commits fraud if they say that the sea containers are unloaded at Abbogbloshie, BAN commits fraud if they say that sea containers sent to China are unloaded at Guiyu.

8.  Is modern shredding technology superior to hand disassembly?

Hand dis-assembly is certainly superior to shredding by machine.  Hand disassembly recovers products like batteries, rare earth magnets, chips, reuseable parts, and can separate high grade copper from low grade.   Burning wires is bad but is actually rare, most of the wires shown in Africa have been sorted for reuse, and most of the wires in China are graded in modern chopping and washing systems.   Shredding technology is only used in nations who cannot find labor to hand disassemble.  Hand disassembly creates more value and more jobs and more affordable computers.

9.  What is the alternative to legislation banning "e-Waste" exports?

Fair Trade Recycling agreements require exporters to clearly label and identify electronics shipped (not simply to load junk into a container), and to have the buyer agree on a price which demonstrates the Cost of Goods Sold cannot support simple scrap dumping.  The exporters must allow importers to hold back a portion of payment (e.g. 20%) to use to cover the cost of properly recycling bad units and parts by hand.

10.  Do reused and refurbished goods produce bad jobs and pollution?

The only source which makes this claim, BAN.org, receives nearly 100% of its funding from Original Equipment Manufacturers who are opposed to secondary markets (like an Auto Manufacturer contributing to a campaign against used car sales), or high capital shredding companies which have trouble competing with reuse and hand-dis-assembly operations.  Under the E-Steward label, companies which agree not to deal with refurbishers overseas pay thousands of dollars and a percent of their gross revenues to the non-profits which use pictures of African and Asian children to market against reuse and hand disassembly.

Not a penny of the donations goes to the children in the photos.  Their images are used to market a campaign to take their parents jobs away.

11.  Does International Law ban the export of computers for repair, refurbishing, and reuse?

No.  International law (Basel Convention) explicitly says these activities are not waste treatment.  Laws have been proposed to outlaw the reuse export practices, but have not been passed.

This is not a renunciation of efforts to improve recycling.  Certification and improvement of reuse and recycling exports is good. But most African, Latino, and Asian buyers do not resemble the exaggerated pictures distributed by some non-profits.   Please look into Fair Trade Recycling, and Responsible Recyclers practices.  It makes a lot more sense than export bans and subsidies to destroy working computers.

Sacramento Bee Finds Guys: How SB20 Defrauds Reuse

Warmer, Warmer, Waarrmmmmer... Cold!

On Sunday, Sacramento Bee reporter Tom Knudson released another big story about "E-Waste" exports in California.  He is the reporter who travelled to visit Retroworks de Mexico last February, and did a good couple of stories about SB20.   Yesterday's article is titled "California recyclers find market for toxic trash" (follow link).  (2012- McClatchy has dropped links to the story, but follow ups found here).

Knudson nearly scores a home run.  However, there remain some bases to touch, or dots to connect.  The article continues to leverage value from the myth that recyclers overseas are nasty and brutish (I admit they are short).  I know Tom struggled with how to describe a fair trade operation.  Today I'll try to weave the arms and shoulders of the multi-colored dreamcoat together...