Postscript: Entrepreneur E-Waste Recycler 2

January 2, 2012:  It being the winter break, I've tinkered with and re-edited yesterday's post on Entrepreneurism several times.  It's better, if not yet shorter, than when it was first posted.  I left the crazy long Mad Man title as kind of a warning that it would be difficult to skim.  The post centers on an essay by Kentin Waits, published in OpenForum.com

Five Essential Characteristics of the Entrepreneural Mind. 

1.  Creativity
2.  Suspicion of Predictors
3.  Comfort with Uncertainty
4.  Openness to Experimentation
5.  Functional Humility

This morning, I thought about people who are really looking to get into the recycling business, people who are thinking of becoming entrepreneurs.  For that audience, my own shanzai essay is a little one sided.

There are of course other true entrepreneurs who have entered the "e-waste" business on completely different terms than I have.  It takes creativity, suspicion, comfort with uncertainty, and experimentation to design an automated shredding and chopping and grinding machine, and to take a chance on not exporting when everyone else is donig so.   I don't look down on any of the companies which established the USA's domestic recycling infrastructure.  In fact, companies like mine NEED them to keep from sending toxics along for the ride, and for improving the junk in loads from 30% to 15% and better.

I can't even blame those who helped to fund the insulting and racist campaign that turned my Egyptian friend Hamdy and his brother Essam, both with medical degrees, into "waste tourists" and criminals.  Or at least, they were suspicious dark skinned exporters who no one felt comfortable trading with.  And the other recyclers can't blame me for taking credit for my own risk.  My ewaste company was on Hamdy's side when their friends twittered down the dictators regime.   If some of the 30,000 computers I sold there since 2001 played a part, I'm glad.

If some of those computers wind up in a Cairo dump 12 years later, with wire yokes scavenged by Zaballeen recyclers, the monitor would still have served its purpose 5 times as long as if it had been shredded after it was upgraded.  And it will have helped 5 times as many people.  And it did something besides play "Doom" or "Second Life".   Heck, the computer itself lived a second life.

Long term commitments

Manufacturers have had a great engagement with ewaste and recycling lately. There have been some great instances of product stewardship. The coupon program Good Point Recycling just rolled out for free TV collections YEAR ROUND (not long line event based) could not have happened without a constructive dialogue.

Obviously, I have also blogged in the past about the cautions raised by Vance Packard in his 1960 book "the Waste Makers", which ranks with Rachael Carson's "Silent Spring" as a message that sobered up a generation about the planet and growth. But I also buy mutual funds with stock in electronics manufacturing, and I worship the productivity that computers and internet have brought to us since then.

Here is my observation about legislation, generally. Wonderful activists become enamoured with recycling systems. "Universal Waste" was the call in the 1990s, as it was the hazardous waste companies who held the podium when the questions were about ewaste and CRTs. Then Waste Bans in the late 1990s, followed by California ARF and retailer involvement in the earlier part of the decade.

Now several manufacturers are rolling out takeback programs. It might work out great. But to legislate their involvement is kind of a "marriage", and the rights and obligations of each party have to be looked at carefully. My experience is that I can develop a strong relationship with a representative of a manufacturer, but that their hands can become tied or they can get sent elsewhere.

If the manufacturers are somehow obligated, they have to have a say in how things are handled. If they have a say in the handling of the "ewaste", they want the valuable surplus property too. And they sure don't want ink cartridges sold to refillers, laptops refurbished, and other "counterfeit" or "piracy" or "used" or "market cannabalization". So they steer the business away from reuse to shredding companies with "zero tolerance" export policies.

And that is perfectly reasonable if they are footing the bill. Let's try that for a few years. But legislation is kind of a marriage. Are we so certain this will work out that we want to commit it to law without sunset?

I would feel much more comfortable if we focus the trial on TVs, which have a very limited reuse market and a very high stake costs and environmental impact. I'm 47, and my experience is that when I speak out cautiously to moderate legislation - whether it is packaging in MA 1992, or bottle bill, or Universal Waste, or Zero Export, or Advanced Recycling Fee, or now "Manufacturer Takeback", that I alienate 30% of my friends. Another 30% give blank stares. But the 40% remaining, whether they agree or disagree, give me credit for being accountable, transparent, and with integrity intact.

I am basically concerned that environmentalists who know little enough about the "secondary market" are willing to trade it back to OEMs in return for 15 cent per pound off solid waste costs. Not enough questions. The used car economy is 7 times the size of the new car economy, and the social costs of destroying working and resellable equipment may be considerable. Perhaps my children will live in a society with no personal property at all, the copper and aluminum and steel will belong to the original equipment manufacturer, they will just have a license to use their computer, and an agreement to return it when they are done. It might be great. It's available now, and it's called "leasing". But giving the manufacturers control over the laptops and cartridges in return for getting rid of the CRTs seems more like something to try out in a contract for a year or two, not something to legislate.