While looking to upload some papers in Academia.edu, I ran across an article published by Recycling Today magazine in 2002 - by yours truly. "Setting a Higher Standard" explained that boycotting the export market would be a "war on drugs" approach, forcing legit oversees reuse and recycling operations to meet demand via "back alleys".
Here are 3 conclusions about e-waste export policy at the end of the article (edited by Brian Taylor).
Looks sound.
1) Send Quality. Meet the customers and find out what they want. Just export that. Don't throw a piece of junk on the container that you don't know what to do with. This would become the foundation of WR3A.org and Fair Trade Recycling.
2) Support Reuse and Repair. This forshadowed Ifixit.org, was influenced by repairfaq.org's Silicon Sam. I'd used Sam's repair instructions while reviewing Chinese purchase orders, and found the Chinese buyers were giving instructions that would eliminate non-repairable units. This led to the realization that China was not buying ANY CRT Televisions, only specific 15" and 17" CRTs, which meant the trade was not driven by cost externalization. California SB20 went off a cliff that year.
3) Support Reputable USA companies. This forshadowed R2 and E-Stewards.
Basel Action Network attacked me for writing the article, personally, and that is how I met Jim Puckett. He blasted a response to the article via "Microsoft Outlook" and cc'd dozens of people whom I'd never met, but with whom I'd become acquainted over the years.
The article was sent to some folks at US EPA, who later hired me as a consultant for the 2006 Federal Register CRT Rule, which funded my second trip to Asia - this time bringing Craig Lorch of Total Reclaim and Lin King of UC Davis, to visit some of the "Big Secret Factories" that BAN was racially profiling as "primitive rice paddies". (If you are researching MIT Senseable City Lab and BAN's Monitour project, there's a chestnut about this at the bottom of this blog).
Here are 3 conclusions about e-waste export policy at the end of the article (edited by Brian Taylor).
1) Send Quality. Meet the customers and find out what they want. Just export that. Don't throw a piece of junk on the container that you don't know what to do with. This would become the foundation of WR3A.org and Fair Trade Recycling.
2) Support Reuse and Repair. This forshadowed Ifixit.org, was influenced by repairfaq.org's Silicon Sam. I'd used Sam's repair instructions while reviewing Chinese purchase orders, and found the Chinese buyers were giving instructions that would eliminate non-repairable units. This led to the realization that China was not buying ANY CRT Televisions, only specific 15" and 17" CRTs, which meant the trade was not driven by cost externalization. California SB20 went off a cliff that year.
3) Support Reputable USA companies. This forshadowed R2 and E-Stewards.
Basel Action Network attacked me for writing the article, personally, and that is how I met Jim Puckett. He blasted a response to the article via "Microsoft Outlook" and cc'd dozens of people whom I'd never met, but with whom I'd become acquainted over the years.
