Source: USAToday.com, September 27, 2013
Posted on: http://envfpn.advisen.com
Robin Ingenthron has built an e-waste empire in Middlebury, processing about 13 million pounds yearly of discarded computers, televisions, stereos and miscellaneous electronic equipment in one of the largest operations in New England.
Revenues for Ingenthron’s company, Good Point Recycling, have grown to about $3 million annually. But now, Ingenthron says the company’s competitiveness is threatened by a proposed ban on exporting hazardous waste, which would include non-working electronics, to Third World countries.
The ban has been ratified by 75 countries, including the European Union and excluding the United States. Jim Puckett, executive director of Basel Action Network, a Seattle-based nonprofit, says the ban will go into effect when ratified by 15 more countries. Puckett, who supports the ban, expects that to happen in the next two to three years.
The Basel Action Network is named after the Basel Convention, a treaty to control international shipments of hazardous wastes worked out by the United Nations Environmental Program in 1989. The ban amendment was proposed in 1995 to strengthen the treaty, Puckett said.
“A handful of countries in the developed world don’t like the ban,” Puckett said. “Some countries have ratified the Basel Convention but don’t agree to the ban.”
Ingenthron disagrees with the definition of electronic equipment exported for repair as hazardous. He said those exports account for about 8% of the 13 million pounds Good Point processes, and provide a livelihood for Third World entrepreneurs.
Wahab Mohammed, 36, of Accra, Ghana, relies on Good Point to provide an inventory of used computers and more for his business in Ghana.
“I buy TVs, computers, speakers, amplifiers and stereos,” Wahab said last month as he roamed the maze of shrink-wrapped mountains of equipment at Good Point. “When I take them back I have people who work for me. We resell everything, 80% to 90% we’re able to make it work.”
Wahab tries to make the pilgrimage to Good Point every three or four months, splitting his time between Middlebury and Accra. He’s planning to open a recycling plant in Ghana.
“In Africa laptops cost more than here brand new,” Wahab said. “My customers appreciate me bringing in used laptops they’re able to buy for $100. I still make money.”
No exemptions
The United States has not ratified the proposed ban amendment to the Basel Convention, and is one of a handful of countries that have yet to ratify the Basel Convention itself. Others include Angola, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Myanmar and Tajikistan.
“We’re the only developed country in the world that hasn’t ratified the Basel Convention,” Puckett said.
Good Point’s overseas markets for used computers and other equipment overseas the most lucrative part of the business could be shut down by the ban, because it would require any equipment shipped overseas to be fully functional, rather than repairable.
Basel Action Network argued against an exemption from the ban for repairable electronics at a meeting of the Basel Convention in Geneva, Switzerland, in May, because repairable equipment inevitably includes parts that are discarded, Puckett said. The exemption was defeated.
“You can export anything as long as it’s tested and functional and nonhazardous,” Puckett said.
BAN contends countries in Africa and elsewhere trying to get the electronic hand-me-downs of the industrialized world reusable computers, stereos and more instead are shipped up to 80% useless e-waste. In primitive workshops, workers extract precious metals from circuit boards by burning them, exposing themselves to toxic fumes.
Good Point Recycling ships 40 to 50 tons of raw materials stripped from mountains of dead equipment to China every month, including copper wire and high-impact polystyrene plastic. The shipment of raw materials would still be allowed under the proposed ban.
Until China banned the practice 11 years ago on its own and distinct from the Basel Convention Ingenthron said Good Point also sent working used equipment to the country.
“I never thought I would need my degree in international relations to run a scrap business, but it has turned out to be quite useful,” Ingenthron said.
Ingenthron says China banned used electronic equipment because of competition with that nation’s own electronics industry. In Egypt, where Good Point sent 300,000 used computers between 2003 and 2008, a similar ban had a different purpose. Ingenthron believes former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak saw the Arab Spring coming.
“In Mubarak’s case he wanted to stop affordable Internet,” Ingenthron said. “Mubarak was trying to put the genie back in the bottle. Egyptians were getting online like wildfire, but when you earn $3,000 a year you’re not buying a new $800 computer.”
Fair trade for electronics
Two years ago, Ingenthron launched a movement he calls Fair Trade Recycling to influence public opinion on e-waste. Fair Trade Recycling is based on the same Fair Trade principles Green Mountain Coffee Roasters has used so effectively with coffee, working to ensure growers the Waterbury company buys from in Central America and around the world receive a fair price for their beans and are able to steadily improve their living and working conditions.
Jim Puckett dismisses Ingenthron’s attempt to “co-opt” the Fair Trade movement as disingenuous.
“I’m very much a supporter of Fair Trade, but anybody can grab that term. It’s not copyrighted,” Puckett said.
Ingenthron denies what he’s doing is against the Basel Convention, which does not define electronic equipment exported for repair or reuse to be e-waste. It is the proposed amendment, Ingenthron says, that would classify repairable equipment as hazardous waste.
To work, Ingenthron’s Fair Trade Recycling program will need third-party certification that the equipment is being reused, rather than being dumped. Ingenthron says he agrees with Puckett that dumping is “terrible and illegal.”
Public opinion lagging?
Katharina Kummer Peiry served as executive secretary of the Basel Convention for five years, from 2007 to 2012. Peiry, a Swiss attorney and specialist in international environmental law, helped to create the Basil Convention when she joined the United Nations Environmental Program in 1988. She believes public opinion is lagging behind the facts on the question of whether e-waste is being dumped.
“My perception is this issue was a significant issue 10 years ago but the situation has now changed in that the material price has gone up,” Peiry said. “New technologies not available at that time make this material quite valuable. It doesn’t make sense to dump it.”
Peiry says Basil Action Network has a “very strong stamp of credibility” built up over time and has been able to seize the high moral ground in the public discussion of e-waste. That concerns her for the same reason Ingenthron is concerned. She’s afraid the legitimate and productive trade in recycled electronics will fall victim to concerns about dumping.
“There’s a strong perception in the United States that the Basel Convention prohibits exports,” Peiry said. “That’s not the case. At this point there is relatively little awareness in my perception that discarded electronics are not always a problem, but can be useful.”
Josh Lepawsky, a professor of cultural, economic and political geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, is hoping to shed some light on the dumping debate with a $469,000 grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Ottawa. Ingenthron is a collaborator on the grant.
Lepawsky and several of his graduate students have already done field work in Dhaka, the capitol of Bangaladesh, and reached conclusions similar to those drawn by Katharina Kummer Peiry.
“When we surveyed the people in this trade most of their imports were coming from elsewhere in Asia, principally China,” Lepawsky said. “There are shipments that come from the United States to Bangladesh, but in terms of sheer number, they’re in the middle to low end.”
Lepawsky and his students also found that most of the so-called e-waste shipped to Dhaka was being repaired, recycled or refurbished in some way, a business that presumably will disappear if a ban on exporting electronics is put in place.
The Memorial University team did find precious metals such as gold and silver being recovered from circuit boards and wires, but not with the open burning that has gained such notoriety.
“In Bangladesh we saw in-ground smelting, people using traditional metalworking techniques,” Lepawsky said.
While the danger of openly burning wires to get at copper is well-known, releasing toxic fumes from plastics coated with brominated flame retardants, the possible effects of primitive in-ground smelting are unclear, Lepawsky said.
“No study exists looking at the toxicological outcomes of an in-ground smelter,” Lepawsky said. “They don’t wear breathing apparatus.”
If the dangers of in-ground smelting need further study, Lepawsky is less reluctant to give his opinion of the consequences of banning e-waste exports.
“Bans are going to do something along the lines of the following,” Lepawsky said. “They will harm people’s livelihoods who are already at the margins in terms of economic survival. On that account, they may not be the best thing to do.”
Jim Puckett said he hasn’t spoken at length with Lepawsky, but describes the professor as “new to the game,” without the 20-year perspective Puckett has on the issue. BAN was one of the first organizations to publicize e-waste dumping, although Puckett laments the lack of traction the issue has gained in the United States compared to Europe.
“To tell you the truth in this country most of the public doesn’t know the problem,” Puckett said. “I haven’t done a very good job in this country.”