Recycling Is NOT a "LIE" Part 2. Alexander Clapp Fails Math On Plastic Recycling

Plastic recycling is not a lie. It's not perfect, but if you have to choose how your fresh spinach leaves are sold to people who live in Vermont, steel cans, copper, glass and paper may be easier to recycle at the end of package life... but lifecycle analysis of mining and refining and transportation also count for the environment. We need to keep working to fix the parts of plastic recycling that are not working, but attacking the plastic recyclers who ARE WORKING is shameful. Lying about PETE bottle bill plastic recycling will not fix the recycling prospects for a microgram of toothbrush at its end of life.

In part 1 of "Recycling is not a Lie" we shared just how aggravating it is to have African Geeks in the Tech Sector profiled as landfill scavengers. Yes they are both black, and yes they both make less money that the white guy running mobile phones through a shredder while wearing a white lab coat.  In the same kind of way, successful plastic recycling companies are being cast as failures because the word "plastic recycling" doesn't cover the toothbrush.  In both cases, the arrogant claim that "Recycling Is A Lie" profiles honest, incredible people as shameful.

PETE (#1) and HDPE (#2) Plastics are incredibly successful. They are not subsidized, they are not "a lie", and they are not thrown away at the recycling facilities. People who are telling us that may have a legitimate gripe about the film plastic your spinach leaves were transported in, but they don't have an answer other than "don't eat your spinach".  They might imagine that spinach farmers in Mexico will successfully ship it 3000 miles without most of it spoiling, or being packaged in material far heavier to transport and more harmful in lifecycle analysis (see Oregon DEP study on paper bags vs. single use plastic). But doing so, they imagine they are more truthful than Malaysian Plastic Recycling Factories.

I'll focus on Malaysia, because Malaysia and Indonesia are getting a lot of recycling hate, and I've got experience with successful plastic recyclers - inventors and investors - in both nations. Both nations have been "Asian Tigers", economies who have muslim-majority DEMOCRACIES. There is plenty to criticize (extinction of orangutans for palm oil plantations for starters), but attacking their plastic recyclers is just ignorant.

I have learned the hard way that it is dangerous to single out a single recycler unless they are already (a la Joe "Hurricane" Benson in the UK, or Semarang Indonesia's PT Imtech) falsely accused.  Saying "what is wrong with this factory" has drawn sick attacks, like Jim Puckett's letter shutting down my friends at Net Peripheral in Penang Malaysia after Adam Minter visited them and wrote about them in Recycling International. But let's just look at the largest Malaysia recycler on this list.

Oliver Franklin-Wallis, reporter at The Guardian and author of Wasteland, at least accepted my invitations to meet and speak about the potential for "collateral damage" in Emerging Markets. He visited Evans Quaye's shop in Accra (the smallest electronics refurbished I could risk introducing him to), and as a result wrote a nuanced chapter about his capacity to judge Africa's Tech Sector.  And to his credit, he admitted to me he had not visited a single plastic recycler in Malaysia or Indonesia while writing about their businesses (blamed covid travel restrictions). Oli is honest.  But Alexander Clapp has not responded to any of my twitter or Linkedin invitations.  Alexander Clapp is the one who told the NYTimes that people like me are LYING about recycling.

Here is a plastic recycling plant my Fair Trade Recycling Team visited in Semarang Indonesia about 15 years ago, when the factory was being "outed" by Basel Action Network as a "primitive" operation. We verified their ISO Certifications and photographed their ABS and HiPS plastic recycling lines. Colin Davis, my former VP and Middlebury College Grad (now CEO at Shacksbury Cider) visited in 2009 (I think).

This factory used plastic from used computer monitor housings - removing their paper and foil labels - to peletize them, adding black die, and made brand new computer monitor plastic housings out of 100% recycled plastic.  Was the factory perfect? No, but it made brand new computer monitors as a contract manufacturer to OEMs before converting to a recycling and reuse operation... so making computer monitors out of old computer monitors seems like progress to me. The plastic was just one part of the operation - they reused 4 year old CRTs to make affordable new TVs and monitors as well... while USA companies were grinding those CRTs up to make abandoned piles of toxic dust, and accusing this factory (through BAN.org) of lying.  That was more than 15 years ago... my guess is that Alexander Clapp was in Junior High School at the time. Now he's "recycling" Puckett's stories about these genius entrepreneurs... sigh. Maybe someone in his friends and family circle will read this and suggest he is only "holding up a mirror" to factless journalism.

So back to the present day.  I've posted the image and link to the list of the largest plastic recyclers operating in Malaysia as of 2023.  Clapp and Puckett have accused the largest factory (in that they have accused ALL of them) of operating illegally.

The factory claims to recycle 60,000 tons per year of HDPE (milk jug), LDPE (film), and PP Plastic grades into pellets that can be extruded to make new products.  Putting a photo of domestically generated Indonesia river mixed-plastic litter hardly disqualifies their claims to employe hundreds of staff, or their ISO 14001 certification, or their import permits.  If Alexander Clapp wants to accuse this factory of lying, he has had more than 10 years to visit and show us how they manage to pay for the plastic (PETE and HDPE scrap sell for much more per ton than paper), pay for shipping, employ hundreds, document residuals management, and somehow are "lying" and somehow responsible for plastic litter in an Indonesian river thousands of kilometers away.

Burden of proof much?

What Plastic Recycling Really Needs: Rational Critical Thinking

Wouldn't we be frustrated if NPR did a story on low health and safety standards of vegetarian restaurants in Indonesia, and made the story about vegetarianism without comparing the standards at meat-centric Indonesian restaurants? This is an example I use of critical thinking when I give a talk on recycling markets. I'm not against improving them, and shining critical light on them may be helpful. But isn't associating poor hygiene with vegetarianism and not visiting a control group of meat restaurants a rather cringeworthy example of #gotchajournalism clickbait?

Note to all editors of all news organizations.... Always compare recycling to virgin material production, please, and not to an idealized image of recycling.

There's Always Market Demand for Rational Critical Thinking.  It's just undervalued.  The problem has plagued Journalism ever since newspapers lost the one-third of revenue from classified ads... if only News Corp or New York Times had purchased / invested in eBay 25 years ago...

The drop in revenues continues as journalism competes with online advertising, targeted to unique consumer data from Alphabet, Meta and Amazon.  And "free content" abounds - woefully edited or fact-checked - via links to fake news shared by "friends of friends" online.

That's a long way to approach the reporting on the state of plastic recycling by NPR's Laura Sullivan.  She has made her biography synonymous with a story that Plastic Recycling is a big lie... Either she can fix this herself, or we need tenure-seeking professors and graduate students to lay some math and control group facts on her "conclusions".

"Sullivan won her third duPont in 2022 for her Planet Money podcast WASTE LAND, an investigation with Frontline into Big Oil and the myth of recycling plastic. The California's attorney general opened an investigation into the oil companies citing NPR's reporting, saying the companies participated in a "half century of deception" perpetuating a myth that plastic could be recycled in an effort to manipulate the public to buy more of it."

I learned a lot by trying to show CBS 60 Minutes producer Solly Granatstein that the CRT computer monitors were nowhere in evidence in the Scott Pelley footage of Guiyu. I showed his team, before the segment ran, photos of the factories that bought the CRT monitors for re-manufacturing and reuse. Later I sent them emails showing the "toxic river" in Guiyu was immediately downstream from the largest textile factories on earth, and that the water samples were pretty much identical to Bangladesh textile factory effluent in the Lourajang River. Later still, I helped Adam Minter investigate the integrated chip reuse markets which actually drove the circuit board recycling market in Guiyu... Reuse is still being attacked as "counterfeit".  

Young Indonesian Covers "Hurricane" / Leslie T. Chang's Factory Girls

"Peculiarly self-obsessed... inaccurate and disrespectful"   

- See Leslie T. Chang's TED Talk.

Windyasari Septriani of Indonesia can learn Bob Dylan's song Hurricane, and can share it with us, because she is part of the 3B3K... 3 Billion People who live in countries earning, plus or minus, $3K per year.  You know, the fastest growing segment of internet users.

Cultural Gulfs in Developing Markets #5: Urban Youth

Basel Amendment to End E-Waste

When we discuss the rapid meshing of cultures in rapidly growing cities, and how the "last mile" of people tend to migrate to the first mile of track (and electric cable, TV broadcast, and internet), there's another factor to consider in making comparisons:

Age.

Rural families tend to be large.  My late buddy Yadji had a brother in Yenwa who had 12 kids and 4 wives, and said his goal was to have 25 kids.   I met other men in Cameroun who boasted of 30 children.  It has been well studied that this is a rural phenomena that tends to decluster within a couple of generations of living in a city.  Quarters are more cramped, school is expensive, and multilingualism is mandatory. Girls get to school more often, and educated women have fewer kids.

But life is tough in the slums for the first generation.  As Adam Minter told me, the young Cantonese may take the super-long workshift at Foxconn for a year or two, but they burn out and adapt more reasonable habits.   It's a difficult way out of rural poverty.  But the rural immigrants don't remain "suckers" for long...

It’s estimated there were 1.2-billion people in extreme poverty in 2010. That’s a decline of 700-million since 1990.  - Chronic Poverty Report

There are about six billion people in the "non-OECD", but "non-OECD" doesn't mean poverty or hunger for most.  The young kids from rural villages have it the worst, and they are the fodder for sex traders, child soldier warlords, pirates, drug runners, etc.  The worst jobs Africa has tend to fall disproportionately on the families with the most children.

Youths have a reputation in every country for thinking they are ten foot tall and bullet-proof.  If you want a challenging environment for OSHA rules, hire a bunch of recently graduated blue collar high schoolers.  The race of the kids doesn't matter, the geography doesn't matter, kids are willing to exploit themselves and to be explioted, especially if they are hungry.

But the flame of experience burns quickly.  You can fool them once.  You cannot exploit them permanently, you either have to hire more rural immigrants, or move to a place where they are more abundant.  And in the meantime,  you have grown an urban middle class which will stick around another 40-50 years.  Visit the demographics in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Incheon.

[China's] costs have grown while surplus labour has shrunk, as three decades of the one-child policy means China’s working age population will likely fall by 20% in the next 40 years, and by a further 20% from 2050 to 2100.

Tweets responding to Fareed Zakaria's links (to Jack Goldstone in TheCoversation.com) always yield interesting links.   Jonathan Berman's Havard Business Review (10/13) article "Seven Reasons Why Africa's Time is Now" points out, among other things, that Africa will have more working population than China by 2050, and that investments in "assessembly" jobs are already coming strong.   Today only 24% of Africa's $2 Trillion economy come from natural resource extraction.  The "resource curse" in Africa is beginning to look a lot like Indonesia and Malaysia, which (as I've frequently written) are seesawing away from resource economies into "tinkerer blessing" repair-and-assembly economies... the same path as Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and originally Japan followed.   The less rural land a country has drawn ("lines on maps") around it, the faster it makes this motion.  Singapore was originally part of Malaysia, and it's stunning growth is as attributable to its cessation from rural geography as it is the country's difference from Penang, KL or Jahor Bahru.  The growth of Taiwan correlates to its ability to concentrate on the "first mile of track".

Cities shrink families. Smaller families have more disposable income.  That's the parentage of e-waste at African dumps, smaller families from a generation passed own TVs, and the TVs are scrapped by kids from rural families, more recently immigrated.  It's ripe for improvement and reform, either through StEP or Fair Trade Recycling or by Indian and Taiwanese entrepreneurs.    It has nothing to do with ratification of the "Basel Convention".  

Ask Nneka Egbuna (Soul is Heavy artist)

@Nnekaworld

Africa Hears "Great White Father" in (Seattle) Washington

Since the successful "Fair Trade Recycling Summit" at Middlebury College on Earth Week 2013, there has been a notable trend in visitors to the website (fairtraderecycling.org) and this blog.

A year ago, the deep blue in the USA (ignore Alaska s.v.p.) showed most readership here.  But Europe was #2.  In a given day now, Europe may not check as often.

But look at Africa and the mideast.  In 873 weekly readers, Africa is showing continued interest, in our exposure of the "science" of e-waste "statistics".

The maps were well lit during the Fair Trade Recycling Summit itself.   355 page views per hour on the video alone.  Some of those were "classroom" views with multiple attendees.

But as Americans shrug and say "Huh, that's interesting", and go back to recycling old "e-waste dumping" stories, the logins at African Universities and Colleges continue.

Africans know that "new" product is A) unaffordable, and B) unreliable.   When there is a high number of returns on millions of units at USA's Best Buy, WalMart, or Target, they yank the product.  Certain new electronics have 33% failure rate from electrostatic discharge.  Where do the bad batches, new in box, go?  When a Taiwanese factory gets its display units back for bad pixels counts, or electrostatic damage, or bad capacitors?

Africa.

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.

Environmental Malpractice: Conclusion Prelude (?)

We covered a lot of ground (somewhat laboriously) during the past 4 weeks, basically making the case for two serious "environmental malpractice" cases.  Do the poorest people in emerging markets have all the tools and safety protections they need to recycle bad CRTs?  No.  That is the point of Fair Trade Recycling.   Use the value of the proven 85% good material to pay for the proper recycling - not just of the 15% accidental breakage and elective upgrade, but also the electronics being thrown out today in those nations.   Fair Trade Recycling depends on the use of the reuse market to finance these improvements.  But we must overcome an effective boycott on trade with poor people.

In the past few posts on Environmental Justice, I've shown current news stories (within the past 6 months) about technicians framed, outed, and defamed for their reuse and repair work in ICT industries.  Here's a synopsis of the first two cases (already posted) and a teaser on Environmental Malpractice 7.  This is not OLD NEWS.  This defamation is in the headlines today.

- Egypt:  The false statements by BAN (cited in EM5) give an excuse to a regime to seize computers more than 5 years after date of manufacture - including CRTs that last 25 years - as "e-waste".  The timing of enforcement, 2007, meant there were virtually no CRTs with assembly line dates of 2003 to be found, and 100% of CRTs were seized by Egyptian customs during the next few years.  This led to a 2011 Report on "E-Waste Disposal Problems" in Egypt, which is cited (temporally wrong) as support for BAN's original claim. But the report dealt exclusively with the "problem" of the pile of working CRTs seized by customs - a completely Ban-made problem.  It culminates with three things:  an end to sales by reputable USA suppliers, an arrest of USA suppliers willing to tape fake dates on the monitors, and the Egypt market finally accepting cheap new units made in China, the end of a decade when names like "IBM" and "HP" and "Dell" meant a quality, affordable, internet experience in Cairo.  A November 2012 Headline on Egypt shows a massive pile of mixed TVs and monitor "ewaste" dumped on the ground.   Egyptian Geeks are out of business.  #Hamdy.

- Nigeria and Ghana:  The false statements by BAN (cited in EM6), especially the "80%-90% of African = primitive" statistic completely made up off the top of someone's head, leads to a ban on exports by European WEEE standards.  Africans try buying, as they did the previous decade, newish and tested CRTs.  Greenpeace and the UK Independent sneak a sabotaged TV into Joseph Benson's container with a GPS, and track it.  Benson is arrested and goods are seized.  But a 2 year research by UNEP finds that 85% of the imports are working, and that a similar percentage of material at the Agbogbloshie and other dumps were trade ins and discards from African cities (which had TV since the 1980s).  December 2012 Headline:  Joseph Benson found guilty of exporting, implied to be a vindication of the 80% primitive African propaganda, and no mention of the UNEP 2011 studies discrediting the original accusation.  West African Geeks are out of business. #Benson.

In the final section, Indonesia (Environmental Malpractice 7, currently editing), we have the absolutely worst example of Environmental Malpractice and Injustice.   In the two cases above, rich corporations protected their new sales from "secondary markets" by funding an NGO who targets up and coming threats in emerging markets (which were growing in internet use at 10X the rate of the USA and Europe).  This week's headline repeats the fake, false, discredited, unsupported, undocumented, predjudiced statistic - in Science Daily, a magazine likely to be cited as a source by future "e-waste" researchers.

BAN's silence is complicit in the high tech lynching of technicians in developing markets.  I will show that decisively with photos of Jim Puckett in Indonesia, falsely describing people who had hundreds of thousands of dollars of goods seized, in Environmental Malpractice #7.   #Chiu

MYTHS in "E-Waste" Recycling: Chicago Defamation

Myths..  I was just approached yesterday about permission to re-print my Greenwala Editorial, Top Ten Common Myths About E-Waste.   My testimony to the Patch reporter about state of the art recycling in China was countered by BAN representative Don Summers thus:

Summers then criticized Ingenthron and Cade for promoting the "myth that there are all these wonderful high-tech facilities in China,' adding more harsh comments about Ingenthron's character.

In other words, while apologies should be accepted, beer with Obama and all, there remains a central dispute of fact about high tech recycling outside of the USA.  The defamation and character assassination is not against Robin, it's not against Brian, it's not against Willie.  It is against the geeks overseas, whom BAN seems to want to pretend to be mythical beasts.  They describe Africa, China, and Latin America as a kind of Heart of Darkness in recycling, they describe Guiyu's tech district as "E-waste Chernobyl".

See film of the people we are talking about below.

My Cousin Chevron's Taipei Hypothesis Grits

Chevron Agrees!!!!  With Chevron!

The Poster Child has so many uses.  Who needs a vetted "certification" or standard when you can take a picture of earth's most inexhaustible resource - brown kids under the age of 18?

We've seen the success of an "anti-ewaste" campaign which never had a number or statistic or even a proper interpretation of Basel Convention Annex III or Annex IX... they had something better, photos of children and the word "toxic" to describe something vaguely electronic and complicated which we all had in our basements and could feel guilty about.

Success breeds imitation.

Now Big Oil is into the act.   Take pictures of the kids, then make a demand for something you just so happen to already be doing (donating money to schools).   You co-opt the protest zeitgeist, steer it to your lightning rod, protecting your house.

The big difference between these two campaigns?

Probably the kid got some money from Chevron.  No kid ever got a dime from Basel Action Network.  They take jobs away but don't even write a thank you note.

And as long as we are making stuff up, here is a "hypothesis".  You know, that's an alternative to just stating something bogus as fact (like, 80% of the electronics exported are burned, or 80% of the e-waste collected is exported, or that Guiyu is "the most toxic place on earth", or that arsenic in Guiyu's river came from ewaste recycling rather than from the textile dyes, which are the source of arsenic in other rivers...).

Ahem, hypothesis, here goes...

"Jazz originated in New Orleans because poor families in close quarters encouraged music."

I've got a 15 year old on piano and an 11 year old on trumpet, right here, right now. Practicing.

Playing Nice With "eWaste" Geeks

I sort of get wound up sometimes.  I really believe in Fair Trade Recycling, and it's really sad that our biggest opponents are "environmentalists".  This post is dedicated as a reminder of some of the people I've been very, very proud to have met in developing nations.  See my friends pictures, below the "more" fold.

Photo Simon Lin, Wistron chairman

Photo credit: Digitimes file photo

What is a shame is that I have no slides of, or friends in, Chengdu, China.  It's just a little bit smaller than Cairo, with 14 million residents.  It's in Western China, which has lagged in development.

How is China trying to develop and advance this part of their country?  By partnering with Wistron, (the contract assembly company that owns ACER, number 2 in world PC sales).   The mainland Chinese government has turned once again to a Taiwanese billionaire with "tinkerer" roots.   Wistron began as a maker of plastic cases for computer monitors, and continues to supply SKD factories.  I'm sure there will be Western pessimism about Wistron and environmental stewardship, as there is with Foxconn and other Taiwanese-owned manufacturers.  But do they know that Wistron is also opening a major plastic recycling plant in Texas?  In fact, Wistron funds my company to collect computers from schools, free of charge, in New England.

I have met several people in the refurbishment business who bragged of knowing Simon Lin (one SKD factory owner was a nephew named after him).  Will I live to see one of my friends below, from Africa, Latin America, or South Asia, use the same refurbishing springboard?  No more far fetched than the idea of China's Shenzhen beehive would have been (to most) two decades ago.  And Taiwanese and Chinese investors are buzzing around Africa and South America like bees on daffodils.

What dreams can we have for the developing world?  I learned a new vocabulary word, ODM (original design manufacturer)...

These are great stories, about sustainable reuse, intelligent refurbishing, and geek and tinkerer economies, and recycling takeback, worldwide.  When I heard Allen Hershkowitz of NRDC, speaking on the Diane Rehm Show, say "I have been there, I have seen it" to describe "#ewaste exports" to 83% of the world, I shook my head.

I think I've been to a lot of different places.  Yet I could never imagine myself saying "I have been there" to describe the rest of the darn world.   I've never been to Chengdu, I've never even been to India or Pakistan.  But here are some places I have been to, and some people who have electronics knowledge have in common, with each other, with Wistron, and with FreeGeeks and Refurbishers here in the USA.

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:

BAN BAN Reports on Jakarta, not on Kenya

BAN should get credit when they get it right.  And BAN should take credit when they got something right back in 2006... when it turns out they assisted the first study of Africa used computer imports - and found that 80% are reused.  A link to the study follows.

primitive environmentalism

As for this week's headline, BAN appears to have gotten a bad guy for a change.  According to E-Scrap News, the loads of "ewaste" seized at the port of Jakarta, originating in Europe, are dirty loads... they sound like the office material we got from the Waterbury Office Irene Floods.   The broker, WR Fibers, is not anyone I know or anyone that any of my former buyers in Indonesia have anything to do with.

Now, the free trade argument can still be made... note that sales of raw ore and blister copper - dirt from the ground with high metal content - is still legal to export.  Digging it out of a mountain or rain forest doesn't seem to me to be safer than taking a percentage of metal from dirt second-hand.  And I still wait to hear from the person who bought it, whether they are upset, or were paid to dump it, or see value (like ore value) that we don't recognize.  But I'm relieved it's not another refurbisher being accused.

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.

e-Waste Poster Child Telethon from Disney (*Repost from 2011)

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Tomorrow (Monday) is our R2 Audit.  So I've invited a guest writer while I prepare the inspection paperwork.

"Hello, My name is Mowgli, and I am the spokesperson for the Poster Child Workers Union [PCWU].  You know me from my work in Hollywood's "Jungle Book".  But did you also know I was nearly used as a "poster child" for several charitable campaigns?  My creative boss at Disney frowned on that kind of thing.  Last I remember, Uncle Walt allowed my image to be used on an Italian Lira postal stamp - back in 1970 (see right).

"However, there are millions of boys and girls like me, in the developing world, who have no Disney lawyers to protect us from unauthorized use of our images.  For the most part, we don't mind so long as the photographer is trying to accomplish something good.   If my sister is in line receiving food or medicine from CARE, Save The Children, Oxfam, or Unicef, she's hardly in a position to complain, right?

"One group that has been using our images a lot is now being confronted by the PCWU union.   It's a 'watchdog' group which was taking our photos doing recycling work.   We thought recycling is good.  This is better than being a child soldier, a tantalum mine worker, a sex slave, or working in a textile mill.  Sure, our lives are tough, but if you were me, wouldn't you rather be recycling than doing something worse?  I mean, don't white boy scouts earn merit badges for recycling?

Walt Disney. (2023, July 22). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney

"Now, the official union position is that we can be bought.   Ok, that's so blunt...  But true.  We'll gag and writhe for a peso. But after the photographer leaves, what then?  Oy veh!  It turns out, no pay for the photo, and worse...! Their campaign wants to shut us down entirely!

False Recycling Witness: It Goes To Credibility

False Eyewitness:   I can prove that Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network knows the factories he accuses R2 of dealing with are not creating the pollution his organization publicly accused them of last week.

One of E-Stewards own auditors physically inspected one of these facilities (later visited by reporter Adam Minter), and Jim an I had in depth discussion following that audit, much of it written, about his position on the Basel Ban Amendment being inconsistent with even pristine, non-polluting repair (he conceded to me that the Basel Convention itself allows these facilities, but said in his view the Basel Convention, as it now stands, must be amended).  The "compromise" was to remove parts in the USA prior to export, rather than what we proved was happening - proper recycling of those parts.  He did not like that the focus material circuit boards went with the off-spec and warranty takeback circuit boards back to Japan.

[clarification: Jim's organization specifically accused these factories in the Boston Globe article of March 2010, and last week emphasized the accusation ("inflicting tremendous harm"...) During detailed conversations and disclosures about this type of factory ("California Compromise")  the "technicalities" Jim objected to never approached this falsehood (i.e. even if the factory ships electively upgraded parts to Japan for recycling, that technically a "transboundary shipment" had occurred between export from OECD USA and recycling of the removed part at OECD Japan).  

"This includes untested and/or non-working equipment exported for refurbishment or reuse, some of which is currently allowed under the R2 Standard. Refurbishment often produces hazardous waste, which is responsible for inflicting tremendous harm on the citizens and environments of these nations."

This makes 3 public accusations specific to "semiknockdown", "elective upgrade", and "warranty repair".  One in E-Scrap News (fair trade is not poisoning people), one in the Boston Globe, and last week's, shown above.   This is now an open book.  BAN says that the Basel Convention, by allowing export for repair at original equipment assembly factories under Annex IX B1110, is responsible for poisoning people, and must be amended and changed.  He has specifically said to me that if the Basel Convention is ratified by the USA without the Ban Amendment, that it would be a bad thing.

This establishes that the organization, Basel Action Network, has publicly maintained it is a crusader for international law, but is in fact an anti-globalization organization which believes that trade between 17% of the world and the other 83% of the world is inherently bad.  People like me, with backgrounds in international development of Africa and Latin America and Asia, are horrified by this "war on trade".  The mystery is how the Press has accepted that EPA is bad, ISRI is bad, recyclers are bad, tinkerers/fixers/geeks are bad, and joined this Salem Witch Trial verdict against the Basel Convention while citing, in article after article, the Basel Convention as the source of ethical recycling.

Injustice:  We expect his false accusations, pairing photos of the factory which originally made the monitors with pictures of dirty operations in Guiyu, to have their intended effect.   The false accusation from a non-profit NGO will create enough doubt in contractors, and enough opportunity for anti-white-box (off brand) computer remanufacturers, that companies like mine will be forced to sever ties.  The factories will either A) remain by buying the product to be refurbished elsewhere (outside Europe and USA), or B) be shuttered like the factories in Indonesia.

Smoking Gun:  BAN specifically knows that this factory is not "inflicting tremendous harm" on the citizens.  This is a clear case of BAN leading the public to believe that the very best of the non-OECD 6 billion people is the same as the very worst, Guiyu.

Motive:   This non-profit sells its influence for cash.  While claiming to be an ethical e-waste recycling advocate, BAN knowingly makes false witness against the best and brightest in the converging and emerging markets.   BAN has accused sustainable factories which replace bad capacitors (Capacitor Heroes) of being a significant source of pollution.   BAN takes money from manufacturers who use non-recycled, mined content, from pollution hellholes like OK Tedi PPG and Kabwe Zambia.  They use that money in a cynical campaign to shut down reuse facilities which create high tech repair jobs in cities which desperately need those jobs.  They are succeeding at shutting down sustainable, clean factories, which sell refurbished computers in democracies like Egypt and India and Indonesia... with money from mining to produce tablets and high end computers which those countries cannot afford.

To Kill an Indonesian Mockingbird

"Republik Indonesia" is the third largest democracy, and the largest population of muslims (India is second, with more Muslims than Pakistan).  The country shares stewardship of the tropical islands of Papua New Guinea and Borneo.  It's the 4th most populated nation, stretching over island and archipelago... about three times the size of Texas.   It has some of the most densely populated cities, and some of the most sparsely populated forests.

Indonesia could go either way.

It could succumb to the "resource curse".  The same volcanic history that brought the tidal wave tsunami disaster of 2004 has also left copper, gold, and rare earth metals.  The rain forests are being systematically cut down, like the Amazon, to plant commercial crops - like timber and palm oil plantations.

Indonesia could also follow the path of the "Network of Tinkerers".   Like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore, Indonesia's economy is building on the "geeks of color", the repair and refurbish and shanzhai knock-off economies.  Contract manufacturing has a leg in the economy.

We Could Help... Praise Us, Praise You

About a year ago, Jim Puckett and I spoke about how upset I was over his organization's accusation, and subsequent closure of, a perfectly respectable CRT refurbishing factory in Indonesia.  He said he wanted me to calm down and ease the criticism over the closure of this reputable factory.

Jim offered that he could help.  A letter from him, he said, would go a long way to helping the factory.  But that I would first have to lighten up on my criticism in my blog.  I stop criticizing - he puts in a good word to the government closing the factory.  Quid. Pro. Quo.

That means either:

A) It's a bad, illegal, polluting operation, which BAN is willing to spare in return for my being nicer in my blog, or...

B)  It's a good, reputable, Basel Convention Annex IX B1110 operation, legal... but he refuses to correct the false accusation unless I'm nicer in my blog.

Either way... A or B.... You are not a good person.  I choose to help the factory buy what it needs elsewhere, USA be damned.

Praise or damn the factories for what they are, not for what I say.  I got to praise you like I should.