The Circular Economy of "e-waste" Parts: Opening Our Eyes to Value Added

The European theory of the "circular economy" focuses on the final value of metals, minerals, and petrochemicals. Today I'll try to explain, as succinctly as possible, why this "Ptolemy" circle (stuff revolves around us) wasn't recognized in Emerging Markets.

While researching the CRT Recycling Infrastructure for the Massachusetts DEP's first-in-the-nation statewide e-waste disposal program in 1999, I was told about Dr. Yuzo Takahashi (by Panasonic rep and Japan history buff David Thompson). Dr. Takahashi had published a brief book titled "A Network of Tinkerers: The Advent of the Radio and Television Receiver Industry in Japan."

As a "cross culture" professional (hired by Peace Corps to train incoming Americans in 1986), I found Dr. Takahashi's brief history lesson to make complete sense. Japan's electronics economy - and its imitators to be in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and eventually mainland China - was in one special way COMPLETELY different from USA and Europe. It was a cultural difference.

... and reading about how Asians traded parts and components (readily visible on Alibaba, Exporters.com, RecycleINME, and Recycle.net back in those days) are seen by Asians starts in the Japanese living room.

When a society is building it's devices from components, the value added of the parts is far more important than the scrap value. Most USA and Europeans buy a pre-assembled electronic device sealed in a box and sold under warrantee. That blinded us to the parts and components trade, which is FAR more valuable than raw materials. Like aftermarket car parts, 20% of a scrap device is worth 80% of the money.

Thesis:

The threat of bans and regulatory EPR expenses passed to Petrochemical Companies can be bargained to improve ocean plastic outcomes if the Industry is allowed to "offset" plastic sales (e.g. plastic bags, straws, scrap exports) by paying very low wage countries to pick up plastic litter before seasonal rain washes gutters and canals into the sea.

photo of city of Douala urban canal by Dr. Asi Quiggle, U of Cameroun Yaounde

Every day I see new proposals to ban plastic bags, ban plastic straws, tax plastic packaging... efforts for which this blog re-coined the phrase "grasping at straws" a few years ago.

Here's a few recent articles about the heated discussion of "single use" plastic packaging. Most of it is bereft of science (food spoilage and transportation carbon reduced by film plastic for example), or mis-uses the science (9% of plastics ever made was recycled - but numerator includes durables like underground plastic pipe) to rile up legislators to buy us moral licensing with multi-billion dollar policy schemes intended to interfere with the free market, too often the "first solution" to problems which are associated with poverty, not corporate greed.

(African Offset Paper here, Academia.edu)

What to Know About N.Y.’s Plastic Bag Ban, NYT 2020
Future of recycling policy in California could be decided soon - Resource Recycling 2022

Plastic Recycling Is Working, So Ignore the Cynics - Adam Minter / Bloomberg
The Atlas of Plastic Waste - Basel Action Network and Matthew Gordon (Yale University) and Anna Papp (Columbia University)
US Government Bans Single Use Plastic at National Parks - Guardian

The last article explicitly links the ban on single use plastic at places like Wyoming's Yellowstone Park and Yosemite in the Sierra Nevada Mountains as a solution to the "ocean plastic" problem (World Ocean's Day). That seems like a geography puzzle that even Memorial University (@Rubbishmaker) could not solve.

First, the good news about the growing problem of ocean bound single use plastic packaging.

There's a real solution to ocean plastic pollution.
It's easy and affordable.
Implementing it is a direct benefit to the poorest people in emerging markets.
It's easily accounted for.

I'm speaking of course about the so called "Fair Trade Recycling Offset" program, which I first proposed in 2014. We want to update you in the coming weeks on the enormous and impressive dividends of the $1500 pilot in Cameroon*.

Look at this tweet from @PierrePlastic of Douala, Cameroun.

And see the offset pilot in Action (photo by Dr. Asi Quiggle, U of Cameroon)

Oxpecker Bird 3: In My Opinion Continued from E-Scrap News

Continued From March

"Oxpecker" birds are the ones which eat mites and ticks off of large animals. They are a beneficial, synergistic species.

And this is what I'm comparing the "gray market" to. These are not my own photos, but they were posted in a blog back in 2006, and they correctly show what I learned was going on in Guiyu.

The reuse of integrated component (IC) chips in Chinese toys and lower end electronics was, at the time, still referred to as grey or gray market. It's possible that some of them were mislabeled as brand new Samsung, Intel, Qualcom, or Cisco chips. But they are not "counterfeit", any more than a used auto part is "counterfeit".

The "80%" dumping estimate was wildly wrong. And I saw more downdraft tables (for protecting workers from inhaling solder) than I ever saw "acid baths".

I did previously publish these photos with permission of the blogger, over ten years ago... but I hesitate to name the blogger now out of concern Big Tech, Planned Obsolescence, Big Shred, and Charitable Industrial Complex might "go after" her/him/them, the way BAN targeted my partners and clients with MIT planted chips back in 2015. MIT still owes me an apology, but I have given up trying to communicate with Sensable City Lab.

Too Much Recycling Information: Barcelona Spain 2022

"Less is More". "TMI". "The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good". Recycling activists, enthusiasts, and considered experts all seem to have a personal relationship with at least one intelligent, well-meaning, considerate, educated person whose method of sorting recyclables from contaminants is, "what do I do with THIS?"

They've learned enough about recycling to know that participation is good, contamination is bad.

But despite having (in my friend's case a Ph.D) years of exposure to our advice, lectures, and examples, they are like an Expat who cannot speak our language. "What about THIS?" drew a #metoo laugh when I described my live in partner's method of recycling. In her defense, she remembers where she puts her keys, I need to ask her for a reminder.

Why RERA/SEERA is BAD Export Policy - baby projects thrown out with the bathwater

Much time away from the blog this spring... The RERA/SEERA (Responsible Electronics Recycling Act, rebranded as the Secure E-Waste Export and Recycling Act) made it's sneaky appearance in the House "America Competes Act" in February 2022. I've been writing letters, and editorials against Section 30612.

That's scary. Under the Texas (always Texas, since Green Thompson) amendment, and now

S.1260 - United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021.

But rather than blog about it again, I want to list the cool projects Good Point is working on that might be ruined by the anti-export law.

1. Reopen refurbishing factory in North Africa.