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?

2012: InterCon Takes On Basel Action Network

Word came in Friday's E-Scrap News that Intercon Solutions is suing Basel Action Network - for defamation.

E-Stewards asked to Co-Defame (Herbert Block 1950)

BAN's "E-Steward" business model looks to many people like selling insurance against their own defamation campaign.  Whether Intercon Solutions wins, loses, or settles, we should note that they are not alone.  Unfortunately, most of the people being tarred as "primitives", "polluters", "criminals" and "exporters" don't have the wherewithal to sue Basel Action Network.


Eleven months ago, BAN's accusations vs. Intercon Solutions of Chicago Heights domineered the "e-scrap" and "e-waste" news.   My company had traded in a fair amount of "focus materials" with Intercon - CRT Tubes.   We knew that Intercon was passing the CRT Glass Test, which Basel Action Network agreed with us (in 2004) is the #1 indicator of bad behavior.  People called here to warn me that maybe the CRT tubes were going to China.  It was mathematically ridiculous.

Unfortunately, BAN seemed to have forgotten that lesson.   Rather than do Intercon the courtesy of saying that they passed 80/20 rules for focus material, BAN made it all about a single mysterious container which they photographed and tracked from the Intercon yard to a destination in Hong Kong.   BAN focused on whether a literally anecdotal percentage of Intercon's material was sold to - a person of color.  The story was not about what the material was - cell phones for repair?  laptop batteries?  LCDs? Nor about the capability of the person buying it.   It was about whether the containerload originated at Intercon, and what nationality the buyers were.  The only important thing was whether 1% of something was sold to a person in China.

Ink Cartridge Re-Use: Light and Heat

Readers know that I was indelibly marked by my experience in Zuhai, Nanhai, and Foshan China a decade ago.  When I came across a neighborhood, several city blocks, where all the printer refurbishers had been shut down, and saw the supressed emotions of the Chinese city official, I went a google-ing to find what had happened.  I found an AGMA press release about a partnership agreement between HP and the Chinese EPA, as well as a long (and misleading) article in China Daily about "poison" ink cartridges.  The AGMA press release disappeared, Orwell-style, when I asked about it.

As if the new inks are healthy, and the fake inks are poison...  The link between counterfeit ink and poison?  E-storks with photos of children, and white juju words like toxin and cancer and e-waste.


What has been poisoned is the well of public opinion on reuse.

The fulcrum between legitimate re-manufacturing of consumables (inks, ribbons, toner cartridges) and counterfeit (back in a fake OEM box) remains the most kinetic place in the debate.   I just discovered a blog by David Connett, editor of The Recycler, a trade magazine for used cartridge remanufacturing.

350 Companies were expected at the 9th ReChina Asia Expo last week in Shanghai.  If it's the 9th show, it means it's been organized since about the same time I became aware of the war on reuse.

The profits on consumables like printer ink are astronomical.  The patent wars and push on patent exhaustion doctrine could have long term and wide ranging effects.