TIME OUT: Free the Geeks! Release E-Stewards Rules!

In reviewing Parts 2 and 3 of the essay "Environmental Malpractice", I'm a bit stumped... because I don't know what the "Practice" E-Stewards requires actually IS.

E-Stewards markets itself as being superior to R2.  But R2, the Responsible Recycling standard developed by environmental organizations and EPA, is PUBLIC.  They have their document up for 2013 compliance changes, and are soliciting comments this month.

There is no similar public comment period for the E-Stewards Standards, and in fact you have to pay them money to see the rules, and agree not to republish them.   "Licensing" the path to goodness, it's a remarkable cause.  It's kinda now, kinda wow, kinda 1400 AD.  Just which "Madonna" are we talking about?

If there is a way to heaven, and you demand donations to tell the secrets that will free me from hell, just how noble is your cause?

FREE THE GEEKS!!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE:  Following this publication, we received news that Joseph Benson settled his case, after 3 years defending himself in court, for 11,000 British pounds.  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/owners-and-employees-of-a-string-of-waste-disposal-companies-fined-over-200000-for-exporting-dumped-electronics-to-the-developing-world-8386688.html

Environmental Malpractice, Part I: Due Disclosures

[Note:  Last week I had initial meetings at the IQPC "E-Waste Summit" at Caesar's Palace with Jim Puckett and Mike Enberg of BAN.  We had a chance to try to clear the air a bit following the infamous Donald Summers blistering of "fair trade recycling" at Chicago Patch, Jim's equivocation of fair trade recycling and "poisoning people" in E-Scrap News, the effect of fake math on real people in the developing world, and the collapse of the California Compromise.    They in turn shared their genuine hurt over insinuations of racial profiling and accusations of financial motives, via my blog.   I need to treat that carefully, but have already cut this post into 3 parts after writing on the redeye from Phoenix.  It is hard to find the time to write this as carefully as it demands, but also vital to strike while the iron is hot... ]

First things first: The study of holistic environmental health parallels the evolution of the human health sciences.   Species diversity, carbon, toxics, ecosystems, sustainable consumption, over-population, etc. connect in ways we must study in order to understand them.  Western medicine has made monumental strides, but on the way to discovering a cure for AIDS and smallpox, we went through waste-centric periods of giving tapeworms for weight control, and liquid mercury as a laxative.

Western medicine grew up by making mistakes, discovering them, and admitting to them.  It has developed certain principles, like primum non nocere "first, do no harm".   But when well-meaning doctors accidentally do harm their patients, we don't call accuse them of "racism" or "poisoning people".  We have another more professional term.

"In law, malpractice is a type of negligence in which the professional under a duty to act fails to follow generally accepted professional standards, and that breach of duty is the proximate cause of injury to a plaintiff who suffers harm. It is committed by a professional or her/his subordinates or agents on behalf of a client or patient that causes damages to the client or patient."

-wikipedia 2012.11.16

Basel Action Network and Fair Trade Recycling offer different remedies to imbalances in the trade of used electronics.   Junk exports, or "toxics along for the ride", can happen either because a shortage is created (California SB20) or because of over-supply, or changes in prices of new product.  It is not the intention of the "E-Steward" to create a shortage, nor the intention of ISRI's overseas clients to pay for shipping of useless material.  We both agree that improvements can be made which will help the people in the developing world, emerging world, or non-OECD.

It's not a major concession on my part to swap the word "malpractice" for "accidental racism".  E-Stewards / BAN really want to be treated deferentially, as environmentalists, as watchdogs, as protectors of the poor, not "parasites of the poor".   But here is why I think it's a step forward:  Malpractice insurance is something well-intentioned health professionals need in case of an accident.

One of the first tests in court to differentiate accidental malpractice (unintentional harm) from criminal malpractice is how quickly the do-gooder responds to the mistake.   If a doctor takes a follow up X-Ray and sees she left a surgical tool in your belly and has to re-open the abdomen to fetch it, it's a lot worse if she pretends not to see it or refuses to review the x-ray.

Facts is facts.   It is time for BAN to give Due Disclosure about their "export statistics".

BAN may be excused for using the statistics "80%" a few years ago, and could say there wasn't good information.  They may have missed their own 2006 researcher's paper from Kenya, estimating 90% reuse.  They may have been skeptical of the paper by Williams and Kahhat, showing 87% reuse in Peru imports.  They may not accept my experience in estimating acceptable fallout when the cost of shipping to African ports is over $7000 - In Monkeys Running Environmental Zoo article, we calculated 85% reuse based on prices paid for product and shipping.  And they have loudly objected to the reports by ISRI and IDC that over 80% of used electronics are treated in the USA prior to export.

But a year ago, in 2011, the United Nations Environmental Program and the Basel Secretariat issued studies from in depth research (279 sea containers, following exports from Nigerian Joseph Benson from London to Lagos), and found - again - that 70% of the imports were fully functional, and half of the rest (15%) were repaired and reused.   That makes FIVE reports which estimate that between 80-90% of the used electronics purchased by Africans were legitimate.

Distracted from the Real Environmental Criminals

On my way to Retroworks de Mexico, I happened on a Discovery Channel show (#trivia - on the back of the middle seat on JetBlue, the only unoccupied seat on the plane, I was at window 20F, which doesn't have a working TV on JetBlue flight 179, flier beware.  But I could watch Discovery Channel on the middle seat).  Jungle Gold. its finally captured the ugliness which e-waste recycling debate distracts our environmental community away from.

In Ghana Africa, we see "the real criminals", or the bad environmental activity we export.   Bankrupt California boys, Catepillar tractors, Mercury, guns, and a toxic extraction process allowed by the mineral policies we exported, policies developed during the Apache Indian wars in the western USA... all in an easy to watch "Survivor-like" reality documentary.

At the end of the Jungle Gold episode (different from the one linked above, I couldn't find it), the two American lads  George Wright and Scott Lomu are deep in debt.  The last scene focuses on the worst environmental act performed in Ghana.  Gold mining, and the extraction of the gold from clay (not the same as panning for specks) with highly toxic liquid mercury.

The Americans don't do the dangerous part themselves, they let an African man use the mercury to soak up the gold into a ball, wrapped in a cloth, and burned off (mercury vaporizes) into the atmosphere.  One of the Americans actually talks about how difficult it is, watching his coworker posion himself, and says that someday he hopes to buy a centrifuge for the guy.  Right.

The mercury itself comes from America.    It is imported from Recycling Programs for mercury lamps in places like Vermont, where lamps are sent for retort and the mercury is exported to miners in Africa.  Recycled mercury is virtually the onlly source of mercury, it's almost impossible to find a mercury mine, because the environmental net on waste disposal is so efficient.

Export Bans and  Reducing Mercury Consumption in Artisanal and Small Scale Gold Mining

is a presentation by Kevin Telmer, University of Victoria
GEF/UNDP/UNIDO Global Mercury Project

An export ban that actually makes sense.  While we are at it, let's ban the export of dumbasses.

Fair Trade Recycling Challenge to University of Washington

Nailing shut the case for fair trade recycling of used electronics ("e-Waste").

We finally got this translated, thanks to Middlebury College faculty and alumns.



I'm working on getting a better quality copy.  It's nice to finally see the subtitles of the interviews with 'Batman and Robin'.

"...This combination of white guilt, and white paternalism...  And that the more I got to know these "Geeks of Color", these technicians, the more I realized - these guys are not only 'not doing anything wrong' - but they are actually the very best hope that these countries have."

MIT, Memorial University, Arizona State, Middlebury College, UVM, Champlain College, University of Arizona, University of Peru PC, University of Amsterdam, Universite Paul Cezanne, Cornell, Boston College...   Everyone looking into this finds that we are telling the truth, and that Basel Action Network is the one "dumping" (false accusations and defamation) on the poor.

They are parasites of the poor, and cowards for not responding to any of this.  The universities will be calling and asking questions about the 80%.  We have opened our doors.  We have nothing to hide, we have made mistakes and we are going to show them.  We do not pretend to be what we are not, and do not pretend to do things we cannot do.  If we take the pictures of Africans, we give them a name and a say.  Primitive?  You disgust me for using that term to describe A+ technicians replacing faulty capacitors, or original design manufacturers who own the patent on your touchscreen device.

DISGUST.   Basel Action Network is taking down reputable environmental organizations like Greenpeace and NRDC in their black hole of niggardly defamation.  They have had more than three years to respond to the false arrests/accusations of PT Imtech and Joseph Benson.

For the opinion to the contrary, I urge you to contact the University of Washington, and ask why they have joined a boycott of the Geeks of Color, and why they did not get a peer review from universities on the East and West Coasts who have listened to both sides and chosen Fair Trade Recycling as a standard.

Alex Credgington
University of Washington, Communications Manager
206-616-3412
ecredgin@uw.edu

Alex, if you want to meet the Chicas and tour our plant in Mexico, give me a jingle. For more background on the case why exports should not be defamed, read this piece in Motherboard, "Why We Should Ship our Electronic "Waste" to China and Africa".

We would love to have University of Washington's best scholars join the team, look inside, and tell us why we are wrong.   I challenge you to take your surplus materials, divide them into two equal piles, and we will draw straws.  Send one half to Total Reclaim (a friend and E-Steward), and one half to our Fair Trade Recycling partners at InterConnection in Seattle, allowing product to go to Retroworks de Mexico.

I have nothing to hide.  And I trust Charles at Interconnection and Jeff and Craig at Total Reclaim.  Do a whole mass balance, and see where the monitors, TVs, PCs, and hard drives wind up.   Memorial University may have funding to film the entire process, film the two loads, and escort them.  Oh, and Retroworks de Mexico, while it's in the poorest area of Sonora, IS IN AN OECD COUNTRY.   So no, it will not violate "international law" and whoever told you that... well, like I said, let's have a little "PEER REVIEW".

In 2013 I will close the case.  E-Stewards will either change, change management, change message, or go down in history as a racist, xenophobic period of environmentalist history.

My mom in the Ozarks described the first interracial marriage I heard about this way.

"She's very brave."

She must love him very much to marry despite the southern recoil that surrounded interacial marriage in the 1960s.    I am only brave enough to trade.

I don't want to speak on behalf of any of the researchers from any of the universities.  I just want to change the presumption of guilt, and protesting innocence and opening doors seems like the best way to go about that.   If the University of Washington wants to bring a camera and ask BAN what they should be aiming the camera at, that's fine by us.   We dropped our bucket where it was, and will lift as we climb.

Status of Retroworks de Mexico

Can E-Stewards identify these parts in a computer?  Hand dis-assembly of CDROM drives yields motors, lasers

1110001011000111000101010001

I opened the partnership in Sonora Mexico in 2007, establishing a "maquila dora" company, managed by a women's collective.  Next week I will be travelling there to meet with researchers from Memorial University of Newfoundland, who have won a $469,000 five year grant to vet "fair trade recycling", using RDM as a model.

We will also have a WR3A Board meeting in Phoenix at the Refurbishers Summit, I will post a link.  In the past I was able to edit and post drafts waiting in the draft box during my early hotel mornings, and I have several that I enjoy despite awkward interruptions in the writing process.

The November issue of Scrap Magazine will have some photos of our first trial of CRT cullet (generated in Mexico) used as a fluxing agent at the local mining smelter; we have shipped two loads, and it looks promising.