NGO Plants Needle in Haystack, Part 1: New Outrageous Claims in #EwasteGate

The news breaking today is that a Seattle NGO, Basel Action Network, is releasing a documentary with PBS about their "watchdog" effort to sabotage LCDs (making them non-repairable) and then track them overseas with GPS transponders.  The first company they have "outed" is Total Reclaim, an E-Steward certified company in their own home of Seattle Washington.

Article at E-Scrap News

Does this sound familiar?  You take electronics which someone wants to reuse, cut wires, and turn it in for reuse and repair.   Someone buys it for repair, and then you accuse them of having shipped it for "primitive" recycling.

#FREEJOEBENSON



BBC Reporter RAPHAEL ROWE cut a wire (thinking export for repair is illegal - should have read Basel Convention Annex IX, B1110 on export for repair of CRT monitors and TVs).

Context:  The Seattle Recycler received about 28.5M lbs of TVs, printers, computers, cell phones - as well as car seats, x-ray machines, and UPS.  The NGO doesn't say that the mass balance is off.  Of the 28.5M lbs, about 28M lbs of garbage-in came back out as baled steel, plastic, non-ferrous metal, and CRT cullet.  What the NGO's methodology is to find a device NOT in demand in the USA (CRTs in 2012 Benson case, smaller flat LCDs this year) but in high demand with overseas repair.  They take one that looks nice, open it and sabotage a wire, then place a tracking device.  When the Recycler has a staff person do sort-for-repair, the GPS is tracked, and the NGO implies that 28 million pounds are in question.

Had the NGO put its GPS tracking device in a random printer or CRT television or Pentium 2 computer, no one has ANYdoubt that Total Reclaim would have long recycled it.  This test is designed to disguise the GPS device in the biggest cherry, the patients who we believe could be saved from the recycling creamatorium.  Then, the NGO uses racist language to describe the "primitive" repair people who make a living by cherry picking luxury clients "waste" for the "good enough" market.

If BAN had put the tracker in a Pentium 2, a printer, a CRT television, virtually anything (aka random sample), they know perfectly well the Recycler would have scrapped it.  They chose the device they did because it has high demand and repair markets overseas, and they tracked it to a place a few miles from where the device was probably originally made... a place with more expertise in the device than anywhere in the world.

Remember, the reason NGO BAN told everyone to be very concerned about the export for repair market is that they told the press 80% was not repaired, but was dumped, in "Digital Dump" or "reuse excuse" language.  But it turned out they were making that up.  And their website still has the same garbage.

Basel Convention vs. OECD Convergence: Export Facts

WE ARE THE 17 PERCENT.


The worst recycling practices in the world need to be cleaned up.  R2 and E-Stewards, along with different state and federal stewardship laws, create a space which Moral Recyclers need when there are tough choices to be made on recycling price points.

I agree with Basel Action Network and Computer Takeback, at least half the time.   We agree about the situation of the poorest three billion people, or half of the six billion people who do not live in OECD countries.  Lead poisoning of children is not a myth, it's a heartbreaking environmental crime.

This is why I'm so upset to see my friends falsely accused of causing it.  Good exports are different than bad exports.

Rationally, let's look at the numbers.

"Non-OECD" does not mean "primitive". It's 83% of the world, and 50% of the world economy.  I am a staunch defender of geeks and technicians who happen to live in "non-OECD" nations, who operate impressive repair, refurbish, contract manufacturing, elective upgrade, white-box manufacturing facilities, which create sustainable economies and internet access.

1. Half (50%) of the Global Economy is in Non-OECD countries.
2. Of OECD raw material exports, about half (50%) are mined ore and timber.  Half are recycled.
3. Of the recycled portion (including e-waste), it is alleged that 80% of sales are to 83% of the world's population.
4. During the past decade, growth of internet access in the non-OECD nations grew at ten times the rate as OECD nations.  They need the monitors, even used ones, for video display.

So OECD exports 80 percent of its used monitors (either shredded as raw material, or for reuse) to this 83 percent of the world.   The surprising thing would be ...anything else.  The non-OECD nations are growing, projected to be 60% of the world economy by 2030.   They are younger economies, which have less scrap and more virgin land.  Internet there is exploding.  The older economies have more scrap, and less mining and forestry as a percent of their economy.

Poisoned children in Guiyu China is not a scam or a hoax.  The hoax is that E-Stewards lends them a dime or does anything to help those children.  This is not a beauty contest, where the NGO with the most heartfelt answer gets the contract.  Fair trade recycling means locating the people doing fantastic things, like IFIXIT and WR3A members, and giving them incentives and compensation to create sustainable comfort and prosperity.  Boycotting 83% of the world because the worst 30% of the world is so, so, so sad... It's not a final answer.

And the worst recycling, even in Guiyu, beats beats lead mining in Kabwe. We have to let the developing world reuse and recycle, while giving them the financial incentives to do so in a safe and clean manner.

Fair trade is a real methodology for dealing with e-waste, based on data, trade. We don’t address “primitive” recycling practices in one area of China by boycotting the best recycling practices in the world in another part of China, or another country.

One man’s opportunity for exploitation is another person’s chance for cooperation. The ban on interracial marriage was also a bad idea,no matter how many pictures of unhappy marriages the opponents take. Love will conquer all. And I love the geeks of color in the converging economies of the rapidly developing world.

(Reprinted in Motherboard.tv   More stats below)