Second New "bad recycling" Practice: Plastic Recycling?

Recycling plastic by hand?

We know there are groups which would ban or prohibit a practice done well by 85% of people but abused by 15%.   Marijuana, alcohol, electronics exports...  And so we know that it's very risky to publish information about a recycling practice we all do which is 85% nasty.


The second "Bad Boy" trick, practiced by everyone, is a mind-bender ... plastics recycling.  Selling the plastic back to China to be remelted and remolded is classified by Stewards, R2, and free-market exporters alike as a "commodity".  Both Alan Hershkowitz of NRDC and a speaker at ElectronicsRecyclingExpo made the same point - it's different to take an ink cartridge and recycle the plastic than it is to refill it for reuse.


Now, inside our recycling industry, everyone knows that "the perfect should not be the enemy of the good".  We know that the worst shipbreaking and recycling is better than the best mining, pound per pound, of the same material.  We don't like to see ships sunk into the ocean as "reefs" when we know that somewhere else in the world, someone is investing in ocean floor mining (gee, I'm sure that will go splendidly for the environment)....

removing sticky labels BY HAND

They both made the point that the reuse and refilling is done by a brown person.  This seemed enough to imply that the shredding of the ink cartridge (ink is non-toxic in the OEM MSDS)... The problems with this logic are both obvious and subtle.  The subtle one - the problem with plastics recycling - is something that deserves its own post, in Part 2.

I've heard from very reliable sources that plastic recycling in China is the recycling industry which most needs to be cleaned up.   The question is, do we clean it up by boycotting China?  Or if most of the plastic recycled in China anyway comes from within China, are rich nations the only possible source of material for the best Chinese companies who must otherwise compete at pennies per pound with lower common denominator competitors?

The solution is to find the top 10% of best plastics recyclers in China and demand less money from them, to encourage other plastic recyclers to improve.  Banning exports of plastic to be recycled in China is NOT the solution.  This "plastic recycling" export is something all e-waste companies are doing, Steward and R2 and Free market, so perhaps it's the "new big issue", and perhaps Fair Trade Recycling can be the leader.

Two More Controversial Electronics Recycling Practices

Greenpeace video - But Don't finger them

The ten worst "e-waste" recycling practices in Africa (March 5) is the highest read post of the year.  The pan-African Conference on WEEE in March (WR3A sent 3 representatives) generated a lot of interest in fair trade recycling.

Africans have inherited piles of junk electronics from decades of use (places like Lagos and Yaounde have had television since I lived there in the 1980s).   The "stuff" at Agbogbloshie was in use for years, traded in from residents in cities like Accra and Lagos for something "gently used" off the boat from Europe.


Still, the challenge of "Fair Trade Recycing" is to make recycling exports better, and to address export problems as soon as we see them.. We have to add two more environmental practices to the discussion of "exporting harm".




- mercury lamp recycling from the backplates of LCD screens
- electronics plastic recycling

The problem is, while the pollution from these activities occurs in Africa, South America, and China, it comes from our best recyclers... from R2 and E-Stewards alike.  At least with plastic recycling, there is no debate.  No one claims not to export scrap plastic, and no one has shown up close what that market looks like.

mercury CCFL

For that reason, this will not be a popular thing to write about... The issue must be handled with care.  When "E" stands for "Epic Fail", we don't want to feed the anti-environmentalist, climate-denying, trolls.

But it's better when we as environmentalists get out in front of the problem, rather than wait for a journalist to write a gotcha-man-bit-dog anti-recycling story.  My theme is that we have more confidence in professions, like medicine, which announce on their own that a treatment may do more harm than good, because they have research universities studying human health on a long term basis.

Tomorrow, Part 2:  Mercury lamp recycling from LCDs.

Just a peek at the good news - in LCD lamp recycling, and in plastic recycling, the more it is done by hand, the better the outcome.  If you are studying for your E-Waste Recycling S.A.T.,  "shredding machines are to lamp and plastic recycling as RoboCop nemesis Ed 209 is to stairs..."