Tangled Up in ... Red Tape

As a former director of a 20ish person division at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, I learned a few things about "friendly fire".  When you hire new staff and grow a program, they are good people and want to "do" something as regulators.  Sometimes, it's tough to get across that "less is more".

One of my favorite staffers was also one of the most frustrated.  He was frequently writing up "guidance documents" for how to recycle, how to run a waste ban inspection, etc. etc.  A prolific writer.  One of the things he liked to write was surveys to mail out to the recyclers.

I'd ask him why he needed the information, e.g. number of employees at each recycler, or type of baler?   He looked at me quizzically.  We were the state, we were supposed to know.

Motherboard: Why Export Electronic Waste

Read about the "Ewaste Decade" in this week's Motherboard.

Regular good point blog readers won't be surprised, but I'm always glad to see the story of Geeks of Color told in another venue.  Motherboard is kind of a geek Huffington Post, and I'm glad this post is getting attention.

The Best e-waste recycling practices are colorblind, and based on telling the truth.  The editorial is also posted via the jump break below.  I like the comments sent by email, thanks.

Why We Should Send Our Electronic Waste to China and Africa    Posted by WR3A on Saturday, Mar 26, 2011

 

"ewaste" Command and Control

Reviewing an online copy of the state of Washington's Standard Plan (for E-Waste), I found this paragraph.

O.1  Collectors  

Registered collectors, depending on the types of CEPs collected and their location’s convenience to covered entities, should be able to operate at rates comparable with other collectors with similar characteristics.  Fairness to the Authority and to the collector is heavily dependent upon volume.  For example, a collector that chooses to accept only laptops and computers (no TVs or monitors); receives 200 pounds of CEPs a day; is staffed with one employee for 10 hours per day; and incurs rent and utility expense of $30 per day would realize fixed costs of approximately $130 per day.  The amount required to cover expenses at this collection level would equal $0.65 per pound.  If the collector expanded operations to accept all CEPs; relocated to a more visible area (assuming effective public outreach); and received 1,200 pounds per day, fixed expenses would be covered at only $0.11 per pound.

So you only take laptops, which can be resold at an average of $80 each.  Because you only accepted laptops, no TVs, your overhead (rent, utilities, etc.) per pound is higher.  So you should be paid 65 cents per pound, while someone who breaks their back lugging console TVs (negative -$40) should be paid 11 cents per pound.

"E-Waste" Curveball: Criminalizing by Speed Limit

R2, Responsible Recyclers' Standard, is a 55 MPH speed limit on the highway, 30 MPH city.  It's good enough.

E-Stewards is a stricter standard.   35 MPH highway, 10 MPH city.   E-Steward advocates argue that the problems of pollution and export mean that 55 MPH is not strict enough.  Any standard which is stricter must be better.

Lowering the speed limit will produce more speeders.  Maybe this is how BAN plans to establish that 80% of exports are illegal and polluting - by establishing a standard which only 20% of recyclers can meet.  The outcome of that will be a very small, elite group of recyclers whose primary promotional strategy is to denigrate the competition.

IFIXIT Video on IPhone

Here's another cool IFIXIT contribution to reuse, repair and recycling.  I have a link to IFIXIT.com on the Resources page, as well as to Silicon Sam's RepairFAQ.   I must say I initially thought that Kyle and the crew at IFIXIT had their work cut out for them if they were to improve on the wiki-repair site that Sam M. Goldwasser invented in the 1990s.  But the use of video (without a lot of language audio) makes IFIXIT a terrific tool.