Write the Rule: How to make sure a laptop is ok to export

If we can just write down the lyrics to this Jayme Gutierrez song, and similar songs for 11,587 other used electronics products, we can crack the case on how to ensure that people paying $265 for a broken HTC Evo aren't burning it for copper value, in primitive conditions.

"E-Waste" Compliance Primer: Quiz Brought to you by Amazing People

Legal or Illegal: Go to Quiz (below video)

Warning:  Different Regulators answer differently

International commerce law, International environmental law, national commerce law, foreign national commerce law, national environmental law, foreign environmental law, civil law.

Your mission:  to provide affordable electronics collection, asset management, and recycling service (aka "e-waste" management).

Your gauntlet:  to perform your mission legally, satisfying all clients (collectors and buyers) and employees in all jurisdictions, state, federal, various foreign national, and international.  Warning, the rules change every time you cross a border, but your civil law agreements -what you are to do by contract - extends across those borders.

If you collect an object from the jurisdiction of person A and sell it to person B, it may be labelled a "waste" in jurisdiction A, when waste is not allowed by the jurisdiction where person B resides... though the object is considered a commodity there.  You must obey these rules, but still deliver the Object to the person best able to reuse it.

To Our Recycling Friends In Egypt

Although the business we had together has been taken away by a stupid Basel-Influenced policy (actually Ban Amendment, the Basel Convention allows import for repair), which declared  repair to be waste, we are still close with our friends in Egypt.  As I watch the news of protests in the street there, I feel a mix of emotions... happiness, fear, sadness, worry, hope, and tremendous pride.


The CRT monitor repair shop I toured there was not shiny.   It was not particularly well lit.   But it created jobs for 22 young Egyptians under the age of 30, who tested and repaired and refurbished computers for sale in the technology malls.   Some of their computers they sold were to hospitals and medical students.  Some, no doubt, are in use posting news on Twitter and Facebook.

The techs in these photos taught me a lot about computer repair SLIDE SHOW  On the visit with my family, I brought two non-working laptops, which my own techs said had bad capacitors.  I sat with my colleague in his shop as he sent the laptops to the backroom.  An hour later, the tech returned with both laptops repaired;  one I used on the trip, and I gave the other to my host.  I was not Henry Higgins, I was Eliza Dolittle.

Egypt is one of the largest 3B3K markets (part of the 3 billion people who earn about $3,000 per year).  It has tremendous capacity to become a nation of tinkerers, like Japan, and to become the strongest and most developed democracy in Africa.  I experienced a lot of laughter in Cairo.

What Happens to Reuse Exports "Eventually"?

Test in VT, Refurbish in Asia, Sell w/ warranty in Egypt

We were recently asked this question, again, by an environmentalist.  She expressed doubt or concern whether the completely refurbished computers we help to provide were really an answer to "the e-waste problem".  Eventually, she said, the computers would go obsolete.  What happens when they become e-waste some day in the future?

I think we've answered the same question about a half dozen times.   For the record, before I repeat my answer (in GREEN below), here are the four questions I asked back but did not get a response to yet, but may.. eventually.

(To imagine the conversation a little better, first watch the John Cleese and Manuel duet, from BBC's Fawlty Towers, at bottom)

1. What happens if I shred this computer?  Will the African get a new one eventually?
2. What eventually happens when a brand new computer is donated to the poor country?  Should new computers be banned too?
3. What happens if people in the poor countries cannot get online?  Will they sooner have a recycling infrastructure ten years from now?
4. Would the USA live by the standard that you cannot sell technology (think of plasma TVs) until there is a recycling system in place for them?  Doesn't supply always precede the recycling investment?

Now, here is OUR ANSWER.  In the countries we sell working and reuseable CRTs to, we pay our partners to properly recycle any accidental breakage.  And the partners now take back an old junker for every piece they resell for reuse.  It's a "Monitors for Clunkers" program, and it resulted in a proper end market where none would have existed had Fair Trade Recycling been stopped.

EPA Says: Commodity or Waste? E-waste Regulator Checklist

Last February (2010) we posted a "State E-waste Regulator Compliance Primer checklist format" - for compliance with EPA "commodity exemption" conditions.  I expected some comments and feedback, but did not get much, and the checklist has not had as many visitors as other posts.   Since many state regulators are in a new position of regulating electronic scrap, electronics reuse, and electronics waste, I thought I should republish it, and ask again for comment.