The Basel Convention: Bayesian Soup Nazi Episode

Ok, Another E-Scrap Conference, and another allusion to an American comedy.  I hope my international readers will be patient.

R2 or E-Steward?  Who has the best recipe?

Yesterday's E-Scrap 2012 Conference in Dallas had two sessions worth writing about.   John Lingelbach of R2 and Jim Puckett presented on the two certification programs for Electronics Recyclers (along with auditor Kelley Keough of Greeneye).   Later, Travis Reed Miller of MIT presented on the use of Bayesian predictors to refine data, and Laura Bloodgood of US International Trade Office reported (without data) on the survey work on 900+ e-scrap firms.

The session with BAN E-Stewards and R2 was very amicable.  Sitting in the audience, I couldn't help but feel bad for having taken Puckett tiredly to task the day before in the blog.  They seemed to narrow the "disagreement" between the two programs down as follows:

1. E-Stewards is expensive.  And R2, while cheaper, is unsustainable (it needs to be more expensive).
2. BAN - a little unclearly, I thought - described their belief in evolving WITH a Basel Convention group.  The Basel Ban Amendment - not passed - should be incorporated in the standard because they are confident it will be passed.  The E-Steward position on export of goods for repair, while CLEARLY on the list of Annex IX "non-waste" activities, is that they should be held to a standard of a recent committee at Basel Meetings... ie not to International Law, but held to the amendment of the international law which the non-profit NGO promotes for a living).

This "adherence to promoted future law" of course is what frightens the USA away from Ratifying Basel Convention.   The USA Congress might agree with everything in a convention as written, and then Jim Puckett may make a presentation in Jakarta or Columbia, and the non-elected international group of attendees may vote that repair, allowed in the Convention, should no longer be allowed.  In that case the USA has passed a law which gives a non-elected international  interest group, effectively, regulatory power over USA companies.  UN Treaty 101.

The Trouble with "E-Waste" Stewardship: Part I

I'm not against Product Stewardship.  

keys to the city

The problem is, in their very first foray into command and control of "waste" and "markets", they chose something poorly defined and extremely complicated.  By applying a vocabulary change, and an invented word "e-Waste", they made surplus electronics policy and RCRA look a whole lot simpler than it is.

Looking back, I can see how we created some Myths about "E-Waste" [Top 10: Greenwala], and got ourselves into a world of ghost tonnage, capacitor recalls, conspicuous consumption,  planned obsolescence, local taxes, patent extension, non-tariff trade barriers, mineral policy, Egyptian revolutions and social engineering in the developing world.   So many things, it turns out, that running a successful paper recycling business, with a CDL from Boston, had qualified me, and others like me, to put ourselves in charge of.

One reason I went into electronics recycling was that it's rich and complicated field.  Compared to paper recycling (where I cut my teeth at a self-sustaining NGO Earthworm Inc. in Boston), computer recycling was dynamic.  Used PCs were extremely complex, with software issues (growth of software, not bad design, doomed the 486, Pentium I, etc.), repair and upgrade, counterfeiting, planned obsolescence, and international trade.  The analog signal auctions planned in 1996 to replace analog rabbit-ear TVs, the hard rock copper mining, the Superfund bankruptcy, mercury and toxics, and digital divide... It was like I'd moved from the farming communities of the Ozarks to live in a Recycling Policy Metropolis.

Having worked for 8 years in state government, I can tell you that state and county employees got excited by this too.   My years at DEP were a thrill and an honor, as I was able to recruit or hire some of the best and brightest staff in my lifetime.   We had a half a floor of environmentalists with policy and engineering degrees, many from prestigious schools in Boston.  And we had a track record - we had created curbside recycling, in the shoes of the officials who made bottle bill returns the law before us.  We had taken two laws, the bottle bill and RCRA, designed to promote solid waste, and had done things like create recycled paper content in federal purchases, saving trees and baby owls, and making it incredibly easy for our neighbors across the street to do so.  We made some mistakes (fodder for another blog), but on the balance, our market interference created certainty of recycling raw material supply, which had been the main problem for paper mills who were more confident about supply from a forest they owned than a fickly Earth Day hippie do-gooder marketplace.

So after a couple of decades of recycling successes, state recycling departments were flush.

We'd tackle "toxics next".  As I said to the staff in my last years at DEP (going strategically to take oversight of another department, perhaps), landfills weren't closing because they were too heavy.  The issue with unlined landfill closure was toxics.  We had to position ourselves to assess the quality of the waste we were diverting.

It was my own private mission creep, but as I grew my own department, others in the business of state government grew their agendas as well.

Tomorrow Part II:   How States Rushed In to Surplus Technology Policy

EWaste: Where We Go With What We Know? (AFRICA)

I'm an optimist about the future, not an apologist for the present.  Recoiling from poverty is not the same thing as compassion.  We have to get our hands dirty helping Africa, not just keep our consciences in shiny isolation.  

Scientific study, UN participation, interviews with importers and exporters, surveys by ISRI, mapping of transport by geographers, measure of display sale shipments, measure of growth of online access... in the past ten years we've learned a lot about electronic scrap recycling that we didn't know when "exporting harm" (NGO's first video) hit the circuit.

Some in the OECD* want us to think there are still too many unknowns to "risk trade" with surplus electronics overseas.   But with what we know, where do we go to make progress for the 83% of the world in "non-OECD" countries?



What happens to "E-Waste" In Africa?

 -    Most of the junk being burned by kids was in use for years, collected from offices and homes in Accra.

 -    Most of the money and jobs in the African recycling economy come from the added value of repair and refurbishing.  There are 30,000 technicians, only a few hundred "scrap boys".

 -    Most technicians prefer to work on electronics from rich people which they can resell and reuse.

 -    Most of the scrap boys have no other place to go except war, drugs, mining, and crime.

 -    Most end-of-life computers are hand-disassembled, which adds economic and environmental value -  
    stripped to the bone for reuse and parts potential, and every metal is graded and cleaned.

 -    Rich in Africa get new computers, middle class get used computers, the poor inherit the scrap.  The
       problem in the imagery poverty.  Poor won't get richer via economic isolation.


Who has the Supply of Electronic Scrap, surplus and waste in the USA?

 -    Most wealthy generators of technology are risk averse, won't risk to be accused  of dumping.

 -    Most wealthy generators of new technology buy new (upgrade) rather than repair and reuse.

 -    Most wealthy generators of new technology live in states which ban the export of used computers.

 -    Most recyclers of technology don't have time or experience in Africa.

 -    Most of the "worst e-waste" is processed in the USA, clean scrap value is sold on world markets.


What happens to surplus electronics in the USA?

 -    Most businesses who export to Africa don't get big contracts which ban export to Africa.

 -    Most Africans who buy from the USA don't buy from companies with big contracts in USA.

 -    Most containers of electronics, copiers, displays, unloaded in Africa are sourced from smaller e-waste
      businesses without the capacity to shred the bad and buy new.

 -    Most domestic reuse techs prefer first dibs on USA laptops, servers and computers.


What does Fair Trade Recycling do?

 -    Creates a trading window for big USA companies to sell their best stuff to African Techs.

 -    Gives wherewithal and incentives to Africans to adapt best recycling practices.

 -    Provides for 3rd party verification and mediation when best laid plans go wrong (containers tipped,
      demand changes, expectations aren't met).


Who Opposes Fair Trade Recycling?

 -    Companies which have invested millions in shredding and e-Stewards Standards.

 -    Refurbishers who see "tested working" as guarantee against competition from African Techs.

 -    New Manufacturers who see market cannibalization in reuse and refurbishing markets.

 -    Junk sellers who like the idea that "export is good" but don't want 3rd party verification and mediation.

 -    Dictators who want internet to be difficult and expensive, accessible only to the connected.

 -    Software companies with concerns about spread of unlicensed ware in unlicenseable nations.

 -    Legitimate E-Scrap Recyclers with concerns about an under-funded "certification" process.

How Do We Jump-Start Fair Trade Recycling?  (Suggestions wanted)


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* OECD = Obsessive Electronic Consumption and Demand Nations (tips hat to Slashdot submitter)

From Vegetarian to Recycler

I was vegetarian in college.  It was not just about cows and pigs... it was about how demand for beef and pork led to the cropping down of rain forests to make pasture land.  I was avoiding beef to save rain forest critters.

Our purchases (demand) and waste (lost supply) have an impact far beyond our trash cans. When I learned about mining, I realized that the intrusion of mining operations and timber harvesters had an impact far beyond the forest consumption.  Purchases by the world's richest 5% of the population (1980) were paying for roads and infrastructure in the rain forests, and exponentially increasing purchases of bush meat or "bushmeat".

Killing and eating apes and monkeys and other exotic rain forest animals was sustainable when the world's population was about 500 million.  At 6+ billion, even if most of us swear off of it, a few ridiculous people will  order "endangered species platter" just to say they digested chimp flesh before they died.  Even if we run a campaign to increase the awareness of sustainability in Asia, and reduce the number of myths about special properties of organs from endangered species, we can plan on a certain number of ****heads.  If one percent of people are ****heads, then all you can control is access to the perversion, you cannot ever achieve all good people.

The access to bushmeat is roads.  If you build roads into the Congo river basin to harvest rare earth metals, other trade will follow the route.  When legitimate hunters, like ones I met in Cameroon, were first given guns, species were already endangered by the demands of earth's 1 billion population and 1% (1 million) ***heads.  But it was guns and roads, roads into the deepest parts of the forest , to mine coltan for cell phones and gold for circuit boards, or tin for "lead-free" solder, which broke the garden wall protecting bush wildlife.

In the capital of Yaounde, Cameroon, I could avert my eyes and walk on by the rugs of bushmeat.  But I knew that it was the "eaters" of hardwood and non-ferrous metals that brought the hunters to the mothers of these baby chimps.  And the West's contagion of consumption - consume, use, discard - is our most frightening export.


If you are a true recycler, your actions will mean more than vegetarianism for a lifetime.  Because if you are NOT a true recycler, and you don't recycle paper, metals and e-waste, then the gold and copper and tin and silver you "eat" opens the doors to the virgin forest.

I spent an amount of time meditating and trying to choose the best possible career.  If you want to make a difference towards sustainability, jewelry, electronics, and other industries consuming rare earth elements are the way to go. I'm fascinated in the potential for women's rights to reduce consumption of rare earth metals.  On the other hand, there are some tragic directions I see environmentalists taking.  Switching from toxics (like recycled content lead) to non-toxic rare metals (like tin and silver, the lead solder replacement) is probably the most tragic career pursuit an environmentalist can engage in.  Selling recycled mercury, diverted from well regulated landfills, to gold miners in the rain forest, is perhaps as bad.  Following that would be anything environmentalist pursuit that reduces participation (through higher costs or cynicism) in recycling... which we all need to be polite to one another in order to avoid.