Protein and Gold: Gore's Generation of Environmentalists Circuitous Path

"I believe in global warming"

"I don't believe in global warming"

These two statements seemed to starkly define a generation.  They become emblems of environmentalism, or environmental skepticism.   Many use one of these statements to define who they are.   The first is more popular, perhaps, because it's emblematic of compassion, and people dig compassion.

I believe extinction, the consumption of diverse species, is the simplest measure of our society's place in history of the planet.  Any other measure - carbon, or prayers, temperature, or wealth - is a distraction from what future people will care about that we did today.  What drives our impacts today?   Protein and Gold.

I dig baby elephants.  And I want baby elephants to have papas and mommies.  It's a simple faith in nurture, and it doesn't make me an environmental scientist.  But because I don't want elephants, or frogs, or tigers, walruses, or seals to be extinct, I work in recycling.  And it has nothing at all to do with landfills, or with carbon.   To save these species, we must alter our love of metals, especially expensive metals like gold.   And if you think teaching humans to consume less energy is challenging, try teaching people to let go of gold.

This is not a statement about the science of global warming.  It's a statement about human psychology, and the way media tries to educate society about need for change.  When we need society's consumption to change - and I'm convinced more than ever that we do - we need to understand our own psychology, our own cognitive dissonance, our own appetite for opinion change, and to invest in messages which opinion research indicates will make a darn difference one hundred to one thousand years from now.

For now, the loudest discussions, if not debate, are over global warming and climate change (thanks Mr. Gore).   There is no denying that there are many, many sophisticated arguments humans engage in to support either position at the top on belief in global warming.   There is also no denying that public discussion of the issue focuses primarily on the psychology and assessment of the opponent.

Merely referencing dry scholarly work on the shrinking (or not) of Mars poles, as an indicator of the average temperature on Mars, demands an apology.  From Yahoo answers discussion, links to these two papers are presented with a disclaimer... "I'm not a denier but evidence shows that they (Mars plar caps) are melting." 

http://sirius.bu.edu/withers/pppp/pdf/bo... 
http://depts.washington.edu/marsweb/pape... 

The discussion of global warming here on earth is usually hedged today with similar qualifiers.   "It's undeniable that even if the Earth is warming for other reasons (solar or celestial energy), that humans are producing more carbon, and carbon will exacerbate the rate of global warming."

Bio-Accumulating Ideas Like Heavy Metals

my dad's idea
like mercury
bio accumulate

my great grandfather
my mom's dad
my auntie maude

the lies wash through
the truth resides
ideas like heavy metal

ideas don't smell
odorless colorless
nothing to fear

The truth clings
past my life
my kids my friends

bio accumulate
mind accumulate
the truth and die free

Some flee toxins
Some flee ideas
Cognitive risk

I ate Plato
I ate Gandhi*
I ate Mandela

I ate Jesus
I ate Buddha
I ate Lao Tsu

I ate Black Elk
I ate Copernicus
I ate Ayn Rand

I ate Kahlil Gibran
I ate Aristotle
I ate my Grandfather

I'm eating Bob Dylan
I'm eating Steve Pinker
I'm eating Woodie Guthrie

Their ideas
Their little bitty kernel ideas
Bio accumulate in me

elemental

Mercury in Gold Mining in Africa

(Sarcasm alert)

"It's Ok!  It's recycled mercury, from USA lamp recycling.  We're using it to get virgin gold, not recycled gold!  USA lamp recycling (mercury retort) is all sold to us to get gold from rivers.  That's good!"


"It would be bad if we were getting value out of waste.  We get value out of rivers."

"And we don't have to work in a repair job."

Never mind THOSE poisoned children. (article on mercury poisoning of fish from African rivers)  The NGOs didn't photograph THEM.

(Link above to press release on mercury poisoning in African rivers, contaminating fish cultures and fish ponds established by Peace Corps volunteers like myself in the 1980s).

Mercury is used to mine gold.  News alert - it's far, far, far worse than gold extraction from aqua regia "acid baths", which I've never seen or heard of in Africa.   But all the policy debate is about how Africans "might" use acid baths for circuit boards, while in actuality, Africa is the final resting point for mercury which American recyclers spend billions of dollars to divert from our RCRA landfills.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Distracted from the Real Environmental Criminals

On my way to Retroworks de Mexico, I happened on a Discovery Channel show (#trivia - on the back of the middle seat on JetBlue, the only unoccupied seat on the plane, I was at window 20F, which doesn't have a working TV on JetBlue flight 179, flier beware.  But I could watch Discovery Channel on the middle seat).  Jungle Gold. its finally captured the ugliness which e-waste recycling debate distracts our environmental community away from.

In Ghana Africa, we see "the real criminals", or the bad environmental activity we export.   Bankrupt California boys, Catepillar tractors, Mercury, guns, and a toxic extraction process allowed by the mineral policies we exported, policies developed during the Apache Indian wars in the western USA... all in an easy to watch "Survivor-like" reality documentary.

At the end of the Jungle Gold episode (different from the one linked above, I couldn't find it), the two American lads  George Wright and Scott Lomu are deep in debt.  The last scene focuses on the worst environmental act performed in Ghana.  Gold mining, and the extraction of the gold from clay (not the same as panning for specks) with highly toxic liquid mercury.

The Americans don't do the dangerous part themselves, they let an African man use the mercury to soak up the gold into a ball, wrapped in a cloth, and burned off (mercury vaporizes) into the atmosphere.  One of the Americans actually talks about how difficult it is, watching his coworker posion himself, and says that someday he hopes to buy a centrifuge for the guy.  Right.

The mercury itself comes from America.    It is imported from Recycling Programs for mercury lamps in places like Vermont, where lamps are sent for retort and the mercury is exported to miners in Africa.  Recycled mercury is virtually the onlly source of mercury, it's almost impossible to find a mercury mine, because the environmental net on waste disposal is so efficient.

Export Bans and  Reducing Mercury Consumption in Artisanal and Small Scale Gold Mining

is a presentation by Kevin Telmer, University of Victoria
GEF/UNDP/UNIDO Global Mercury Project

An export ban that actually makes sense.  While we are at it, let's ban the export of dumbasses.

Guilt, Technology, Race, Women, Photography & ZANZIBAR

Key facts (World Health Organization)

• Every day, approximately 800 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.
• 99% of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries.
• Maternal mortality is higher in women living in rural areas and among poorer communities.
• Young adolescents face a higher risk of complications and death as a result of pregnancy than older women.
• Skilled care before, during and after childbirth can save the lives of women and newborn babies.
• Between 1990 and 2010, maternal mortality worldwide dropped by almost 50%

The same time that internet access increased ten fold, death in childbirth dropped worldwide, and acceptance of gay rights became a hallmark of OECD nations.

Two recurring themes of this blog are the student of mine who died from bloodloss in childbirth in Ngaoundal, Cameroon, and the three loads of Pentium 4 computers seized from a medical student and hospital electronics company in Alexandria, Egypt (called "e-waste" by authorities).  When I'm accused of "not caring about toxics", I say I care about peoples lives.

The last day I handed out grade cards in Cameroon, I felt like a fool for calling her name .. the last student, the worst grade (grades were read out like a competition, in order of performance). Another teacher came and whispered to me that she had died that night.  She came from a relatively privileged family.   Her father was the Sous-Prefet, he was a fat cat, a grand legume.




The 1% in Africa also rely on the "good enough market" at the hospital.  There is no special hospital for the upper middle class, the prefectures.  But the good news, above, from WHO, is that the hospitals are getting more modern, and mortality of women in childbirth is declining.

The chances of dying are declining as Africa modernizes... but at what cost, this modernization?  Should the "precautionary principle" cause us to slow down on our exports of used computers and hospital equipment exported to emerging markets?

Another theme of this blog is the use of photography.  Photography has attracted artists, whose dream is to do something which brings justice, peace and equality to the world.  The photography of war, the photography of child labor, and the photography of injustice have helped change laws and helped improve peoples lives.

Tomorrow:  How the West learned the Poisonous Fruits of PHotoGraPhy.


But first... a little digression This 5th Day of September.  Why the photo of Zanzibar?

Two More Controversial Electronics Recycling Practices, Part 2

If we examine the practices for LCDs which require repair or disassembly, on line, we find two things:

1. Importance of using a "certified recycler"
2. Toxic properties in the LCD CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent lamps contain minute amounts of highly toxic mercury phosphors)

However, you find next to nothing about what "process" is actually being "certified" to occur.   Shredding?  Retort?  Safe handling?  Packaging?   Lots of "white man ju-ju words" and very few VERBS.

• Fair Trade Recycling Intern Adelaide Rivereau has written about the step-by-step process that happens in MY company.
• IFIXIT.org has a number of tear-downs
• REPAIRFAQ.org has some good descriptions of LCD repair from the older models likely to be turned in to an "e-waste" program
• Digitimes, the Taiwanese high-tech display industry periodical, remains the rosetta stone of understanding the display market 

What should an "e-waste" recycler know about LCD lamp recycling, and when should s/he know it? Time for an "environmentalist actuary" to follow the goods downstream, into the domestic and export recycling markets, to tease out the risks, harms, rewards and benefits.


- Handle with care
- Stop the "zero landfill" practices for CCFL

Environmental Justice in a Pixelized City Slum

Fences around slums, to keep out the rich? 

   Last weekend, "Useless Lists of Jobs", was about pixelized slums, a bookend to the "Rich City, Poor City" UN Pixelizes World blog from last January.  Each describes just how much wealth is in cities inside "poor" countries.   Following our Fair Trade Recycling trips to Africa and South America, I'm thinking about specific encounters with relative poverty and relative wealth.

IFIXIT and TechTravels have made also made pilgrimages to "recycling slums".  We all have great photos, but need better research and statistics (like this from World Bank) about the jobs that are realistically available in this neighborhood of Lima.  The photo of the multi-colored walls on the Useless Lists of Jobs post is a little too pretty... when you see the slum from the air, colored only by the brown dust on the roofs, it's a little more textured.

View of neighborhood from the sky... less colorful..  No yards, pools or streets.

Not all of Lima is like this.  But a lot people live here
   
Environmental Justice via Ban on Trade?   Environmentalists have made a very strong case that exports of computers for recycling should be taken "off the table", made illegal, either through an amendment to the Basel Convention.  Recycling jobs, they argue, are so intensely hazardous that even export for repair (clearly asset, not waste management) should be illegal.   If the factory that made your monitor replaces a bulging capacitor, they say, it's a slippery slope to recycling harm...  So they would have us build a wall around the slums, to keep rich peoples' used equipment out.

These restrictions may keep rich people from Europe and America out.  But cities like Lima, Rio, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai and Guangzhou are also places of tremendous wealth. Outside the OECD, and in Lima itself, people are on high speed internet, replacing CRTs and LCDs with bigger and better gear.

10 Most Toxic African E-Waste Recycling Processes

UNEP Study:  The Dangerous 15%

"Risks and Opportunities of E-Waste"
("BAN-shes, cullet, aqua-regia... Oh My.")

Again, it's too bad that UNEP gave "Opportunity" second billing.  I suspect it keeps peace with the OEMs they are fawning over, papers over the embarrassing assumptions about "waste tourists" and "African criminals", and slowly re-acclimates us to the fact the glass is about 85% full.

There is indeed risk.  Not as much as mining, or dry cleaning, but the Center for Disease Control and OSHA do have rules.  Africa needs to gather the CDC and OSHA rules, as Retroworks de Mexico has done.  We all need to prioritize risks and benefits, and do so without hysterics.  Fair Trade Recycling doesn't want to be apologist for toxics.

So let's talk about the toxic risks.  What are the most dangerous recycling processes for e-waste in Africa, India, etc?  How do these compare with, say, dry cleaning, painting, or automobile repair?

At the Pan-African Congress WR3A is attending this month in Nairobi, the deal on the table is the same as Product Stewardship in California... stop import/exports in return for OEM money to recycle.

Africans would stop importing newer material, enforce "e-waste" planned obsolescence laws, and in return Europe will pay them top dollar for a cocktail recipe of sea container scrap... printed circuit boards, power supply, copper, and other scrap.   Something Europe would have paid for anyway, without any such anti-reuse compromise.

Let's look at the 9 or 10 very worst e-waste processes in Africa, and whether Africans can fix those themselves, on their own terms, before taking OEM devil deals.  Mining the metals like lead and coltan for the OEMs produces most of the harm in Africa.

Top 10 E-Waste Recycling Toxic Concerns for Africa:

Veolia, EPSI... Mercury Export Consequences

Product Stewardship Policy Question:  Which is worse, Mercury Recycling (required) or TV export for Repair (proposed to be prohibited)?

John Fialka's WSJ seminal reporting (2006) on the "mercury recycling" trade revealed that not all environmental laws result in environmental justice.   There are some things that shouldn't be recycled.    If recycling mercury from lamps and thermostats recovers mercury, and mercury has been eliminated as an ingredient in new products, here's what to expect:

A) mercury sales to primitive, toxic, conflict gold-mining operations in Congo
B) billions of dollars of mercury recycling costs in the USA  

Description of where the mercury is sold, and how it is used:

While most of the gold is produced by major corporations, tens of thousands of people work independently in smaller, artisan operations, in some cases illegal. In Ghana, for instance, the galamseys are estimated to number 20,000 to 50,000.^[7] In neighboring francophone countries, such workers are called orpailleurs. In Brazil, such workers are called garimpeiros.

The high risk of such ventures was seen in the collapse of an illegal mine at Dompoase, Ashanti Region, Ghana, on 12 November 2009, when 18 workers were killed, including 13 women. Many women work at such mines as porters. It was the worst mining disaster in Ghanaian history.^[7]

In order to maximize gold extraction, mercury is often used to amalgamate with the metal. The gold is produced by boiling away the mercury from the amalgam, a hazardous process due to toxicity of mercury vapour. Mercury is effective in extracting very small gold particles, but should be reclaimed, instead, in an effective and safe process.   (wikipedia 2010.12.09)

The EU and USA responded by banning export of hg mercury as a commodity.  The USA ban on exports begins in 2013.  This is an export ban I really like, and Basel Secretariat should focus on this "recycling export" WAY more than it should focus on electively upgraded parts during used computer repair.


Alluvial mining is basically the ONLY market demand for the mercury.  When it is banned... expect mercury recycling companies in the USA and Europe (like Veolia) to have a tough year.

Non-Toxic Stewardship: E-Waste's Consequences

Just a reminder...  Be careful what you wish for (or mandate).

Indonesia Komodo:   source of ROHS

When you replace toxics, such as lead solder, with non-toxic alternatives, such as tin-silver solder you might reduce the toxics going into lined landfills.  Hurray.

But you replace those (recycled content) toxics by mining tin from Indonesian and Malaysian coral islands, and by mining silver.  Silver mining is the number 2 source of mercury effluent into the environment (after #1, gold mining).

The point is that environmentalists have a moral and environmental responsibility to do their homework before implementing laws which do more harm than good.

My ecological friends have an inconvenient truth assumption, which is that if it's more expensive, it must be better.  Recycling is generally less expensive than mining, because it uses less oil (read:  less carbon) and produces less waste.

But if you tie that recycling up in red tape while managing metal mining under the easy rules of the General Mining Act of 1872, and then mandate use of a low-recycled-content feedstock (tin and silver), you just might be no better than the industrialists.

"Gee, you spoil all our conscientious fun."