2009 New Year's Letter to Recycling Clients

Good Point Recycling

www.good-point.net

802-382-8500

Good Point Recycling PO 1010, 227 Pond Lane, Middlebury, VT 05753

January 20, 2009

Dear Clients,

2008 was an eventful year. We are always aware that you are the reason we continue to enjoy success. We have a lot to introduce to you as we begin 2009.

First, we were proud to open our new 50,000 square foot facility. After years of renting space in different locations (and transporting stuff back and forth between buildings), or adding services (like textiles or baling) just to drop them for lack of space, we realized we are here to stay. Buying the building allows us to proceed with several new endeavors (described below), to process more in house, and to set smarter shipping and marketing targets. We also hope to develop more career employees when the temperature falls below freezing. There are more photos of our facility and operations, and video, available online (videos also coming soon).

The new facility will allow us to roll out our next big announcement - brand sorting for reimbursement. We have agreements either directly or with the processors of the following brands: Panasonic, Sharp, Sony, and Samsung. There are still a lot of details to work out. For one big example, some OEM representatives want documentation that their product was accepted for free before they will reimburse it, but do not want to cover the cost of transportation. If they pay us for processing only and not collection, it means we need to work out what you can collect. To keep our foot in the door, we are allowing individuals to drive to GPR in Middlebury - but that's not a very effective or green solution. What we have offered as a compromise is to charge 18 cents per pound (TV rate), weigh the brand sorted items, and then subtract out (credit) your municipality for whatever the OEM credits us. We will send a separate letter describing our proposal, which is intended to reimburse back 100% of whatever subsidy we get from the OEMs for TVs.

Third, we were recognized as the nation's expert on exports. Membership grew in the World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association (WR3A), a "Fair Trade" organization we founded. EPA hired WR3A as a consultant to identify legitimate CRT exports, and BusinessWeek, National Geographic, and CBS 60 Minutes relied on us for advice and perspective. The Consumer Electronics Association gave WR3A a grant to film many of the select buyers who represent the "fair trade" export market, as well as collections. We hosted and visited techies from Africa, Asia, Middle East and South America, and filmed what they can do. It's hard work to visit and qualify these markets, but we have to do it... In January, CEA presented a 3-minute trailer CES Show in Las Vegas, between two keynote addresses (CEO Craig Barrett of Intel and John Chambers, CEO of Cisco). "If computer exports are outlawed, only outlaws will export used computers". The full video of the CES keynote address includes our video (about 1/3 through)

Fourth, we participated on a national panel invited by EPA to define "Responsible Recycler" (R2) standards, meeting with other respected recyclers, government officials, and advocates from around the country. EPA posted the R2 standards in November, 2008.

Fifth, we developed our staff . Rachael was promoted to a nice front office, and Colin Davis returned from a year sabbatical (running his own business, Builder's Studio) to be VP of Operations.

In 2008 we hired a professional OEM auditor to visit our largest market in Malaysia in October. Every unit we send for reuse is accounted for through proprietary tracking software (developed by Good Point, 2006), and reconciliation reports done by the Buyer note fallout rates (about 6%, which are then recycled, with glass going to Samsung) Good Point has also helped the Buyer efforts to obtain ISO 14001 status this month.

There is more to report than we can squeeze into a letter, but our last bit of news is a bit of a warning. In a year largely defined by a world financial crisis, Good Point has seen rates from ERI (the Pledge company which bought Electronicycle) increased by over 50%. We briefly tried other CRT glass processors, but they increased their rates even higher than ERI within a few weeks. We will do what we can in-house, but the raw material markets for the demanufactured scrap have plummeted to pre World War II levels. We have strived to offer consistency, and don't chase prices at the expense of accountability, but you may want to plan on fee increases for your consumers until the OEM programs mature.

Vermont has offered convenient access to TV recycling for years now, thanks to clients like you. 84% of Vermonters can now recycle a TV in at least one spot, open six days per week, in their county or district. Everyone here at Good Point thanks you sincerely for your support. We wish everyone the best in the year to come. Attached is a short end-market audit which shows where material we collected from you went to last year.

Sincerely,

Robin

Robin Ingenthron, president

American Retroworks Inc., dba Good Point Recycling

Alfred Lothar Wegener: Copernicus of Drift

Alfred Lothar Wegener

It's interesting that his idea about Continental Drift, proposed in a paper in 1912, was something he felt was not worthy of recognition because it was so patently obvious (and he credited several previous researchers for proposing it). On History Channel this AM, one geologist speculated about how many schoolchildren must have been shushed for proposing that the continents fit together like a puzzle piece. I remember vividly proposing it to my dad in Fresno, where I attended elementary school from 2nd-6th grade, and how he chuckled in an adult way and said it was a coincidence. I think my mother encouraged me more to question it, but the consensus was that it was a childish idea.

It's more interesting (in this blog) that Wegener was distainfully dismissed by geological experts for much of the past century, and he died vainly trying to find evidence to support the theory he labelled "continental drift". That geologists succumbed to "group think" and called him a doofas.


...(wikipedia)

During Wegener's lifetime, his theory of continental drift was severely attacked by leading geologists, who viewed him as an outsider meddling in their field.[12] His hypothesis received support from South African geologist Alexander Du Toit as well as from Arthur Holmes, but was not generally supported due to the lack of a known driving force and the absence of evidence beyond the coastline shapes and fossil records. The possibility of continental drift gradually became accepted by the late 1950s. By the 1960s, geological research conducted by Robert S. Dietz, Bruce Heezen, and Harry Hess, along with a revision of the theory including a mechanism by J. Tuzo Wilson, led to widespread acceptance of the theory among geologists.


It sounds now like Nicolaus Copernicus.

(wikipedia) Although Greek, Indian and Muslim savants had published heliocentric hypotheses centuries before Copernicus, his publication of a scientific theory of heliocentrism, demonstrating that the motions of celestial objects can be explained without putting the Earth at rest in the center of the universe, stimulated further scientific investigations and became a landmark in the history of modern science that is known as the Copernican Revolution.
... (merge with wikipedia on Galileo)
In 1633 Galileo Galilei was convicted of grave suspicion of heresy for "following the position of Copernicus, which is contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture,"[34] and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

So the comparison here is the power of groupthink, the power of the catholic church, and the power of self interested parties to steer public perceptions of the truth... but also that truth eventually comes out.

I like OEMs and wish only that I owned more stock in them. When I describe their self-interests, I think of them protecting their shareholders. With that said, the combination of group-think, poster child politics by BAN.org, and the threat of wannabe counterfeiting white box generic re-manufacturers is worth trillions, and it is the single best explanation for A) China's import policies (shredded monitors allowed, working P4s not allowed), and B) the best and simplest explanation for consensus between certain OEMs and certain policy jaggers in the US and Europe.

If anyone reads this someday, I'd suggest it would be a great environmental studies thesis topic to see how the gravitational pull of OEM interests affects implementation of versions of environmental laws. For example, there is was a soda pop company in California when I was a kid which used deposit bottles. But CA became the one state which doesn't institute its bottle bill via units, but by pounds of broken glass. There must be some folks who were in the smoke filled rooms in the 70s who could explain to an interested student how the "breaking for reimbursement" became the norm. Maybe it's a good thing, maybe they were trying not to suck the reuse deposit bottles into the recycling system (which led to the exemption of deposit refill bottles from MA bottle redemption laws).

Maybe it was concern about bottles being refilled with someone elses product. Sound crazy? Consider:

Coca Cola spent a lot of money developing the hobbleskirt bottle, patented by Alexander Samuelson of the Ruth bottling company, when "white box" copycat cola companies began competing in generic bottles. That, and a lot of advertising and marketing, helped Coke survive to be the giant it is today. A true "bottleneck" to entry in the field, it allowed a trademark and a stewardship to be recognized which the marketplace accepted (along with Pepsi and RC Cola).

Coca Cola has a museum in Atlanta around the hobbleskirt bottle and considers it their most valuable innovation next to their "secret recipe".

Is treating CRTs - which have much greater added value as working units - like bottles to be broken merely a hiccup, an example of bad concensus, or something else?

My point as always is that we have a limited amount of environmental dollars in the total M1 which will be spent from our economy, and we have to spend them wisely to achieve the most environmental benefit. Billions are spent now collecting mercury lamps, and the mercury from those lamps is exported to alleuvial mining operations as bad as the worst Guiyu riverside. We need to spend every billion as if it really means something.

I question the millions being spent every month to break working monitors and TVs. I've done it for 10 years. And I'm beginning to spend my spare time reading about Wegener, Copernicus, and Galileo. Surely the majority of people who rejected their new theories were not their intellectual equals. But surely they had intellectual equals, in the church or the scientific community. What did they know? When did they know it?

Statistics and Perception

I'm always grateful that I was impressed by things I was dumb about. Math and statistics, I mean. I kept demonstrating mathematical genious potential in standardized tests (which I now attribute largely to strategies I developed for test taking, later taught by Kaplan). That, with the attitude that anything I was uncomfortable with in learning could be approached like a monk approaching fasting, led me to keep retaking courses that did major damage to my GPA.

So statistics, I took in high school at the U of A and got a C. I took it again at Carleton, and got a C+. I took it again at the U of A after Peace Corps and got I think an A or a B. I took it a fourth time in the MBA program and I think I got an easy B.

What's important is that you can understand derivatives and quantum physics if you have a general knowledge of stats. You can start to discount things you perceive, and appreciate them but put them in context.

This allows you to see the difference in sports highlights between a home run shown because the story is about David Ortiz (the most underpaid power hitter, dog bites man again) or because a National League Pitcher with a 186 average hits his first home run (man bites dog).

When people read about a stereotype and then see the stereotype reinforced, they can begin to feel more confident in their misperceptions....

Ok had a lot more to say but the presents are being opened and no one understands why I'd be blogging on Christmas morning....

Response to BAN

Jim Puckett and Ms. Sarah Westervelt Basel Action Network 1305 4th Ave., Suite 606
Seattle, WA 98101

Dear Jim and Sarah:

In March 2005, our company, American Retroworks Inc., DBA Good Point Recycling of Middlebury, Vermont, commended your organization's efforts to “raise the bar” on exports to poor countries. We offered an explanation of what we do, which is legal (under Annex 9), ethical, and environmentally preferable. BAN voiced two concerns and questions about the process, which we have tried to address.

1. Functionality test (BAN's preference for “tested working” parts exported for repair)

2. Recycling of upgraded parts

We have tried to address both concerns. The result is a zero-waste process involving remanufacture of used CRTs in a manufacturing take-back program in Malaysia. We have visited the factory, and audited its processes. We have developed a comprehensive accountability system to ensure that the factory gets only what it needs. We have established 95% reuse, we have an import permit, and under our direction the factory has entered into ISO14001 and ISO9000. We have asked them to adapt R2 standards, and they have agreed, and the 5% fallout is legally recycled. We have a testing procedure which actually measures fallout (lower than new product sales returns in the USA). We have filmed the process. We held the company and its other USA suppliers to contractual obligations, recycling Of

Of the 24.5% of material we export, we have offered to allow BAN access to the process, and to pay BAN to perform the audit. Based on our last email exchange, BAN has determined in advance that our process would not pass the audit based on the second concern, removal of “bad” materials. What we have done is to insist that materials removed, if any, must not become waste. However BAN is stating that IF any component is removed, it became a waste in retrospect, whether the part is ultimately recycled or not. Under that interpretation, if a buyer voluntarily upgrades a stick of RAM, that a transboundary shipment of waste has occurred. Under that interpretation, assembly (commonly outsourced by OEMs in the west) is also illegal, and we suggest that 100% of laptop sales should be banned, since there are residuals from the outsourcing of new product assembly.

The terms of the Pledge are BAN's to establish and enforce. However, BAN has created a catch-22 – the product must be “functional”, but any part which MIGHT be replaced MUST be removed. When it is removed, the product will not be functional. Functionality itself is a strange term, as the Basel Convention states:

"Re-use can include repair, refurbishment or upgrading, but not major reassembly."

BAN's seems to be saying that they can only repair, but not upgrade, tested working products.

We believe that as BAN proceeds on its current path of auditing and vetting the companies it lists (a very positive development), that you will find there are two types of companies:

1. Those with virually no reuse, who process 95-100% of intact units, and who export the processed scrap.

2. Those which reuse, according to whatever specification BAN adapts, but cannot reconcile shipments (as we do) or verify upgrades or incidental breakage.

The audit of the companies with zero reuse will find higher than 5% fallout (scrap also has de minimus contamination) and process waste, and the companies which export 'tested working' will be unable to prove product is not upgraded after sale. As more and more of your companies adapt #1, consumers will find it more expensive to recycle there.

It is simpler to allow an upgraded part to be properly recycled, to encourage refurbishers to undertake ISO14001 and R2 standards, and to reward them for doing so. Instead, BAN is making it virtually impossible for legitimate overseas buyers (including manufacturer takeback programs) to buy their product from BAN-accredited companies. If my company also refuses to ship there, the factory will have to choose whether to close (taking the very best actor off the field) or to source material from middlemen who get it from who knows where.

Your friend,

Robin Ingenthron.

A Ben Franklin by Now

With the massive increase in access to internet and education, reachable and readable wordwide, we should have had another Ben Franklin or Leonardo DaVincini, someone not formed by their job, by now.