Inside the Fake PC Recycling Market

snydeq writes "OSNews' Howard Fosdick reports on the fake recycling market — one in which companies exploit cheap shipping, inexpensive labor, and a lack of safety and environmental law to export computers and other e-waste to China and Africa where it is 'recycled' with a complete lack of environmental and safety rules. 'This trade has become a thriving business. Companies called "fake recyclers" approach well-meaning organizations — charities, churches, and community organizations — and offer to hold a Recycling Day. The charity provides publicity, legitimacy, and a parking lot for the event. On the designated day, well-meaning residents drop off their old electronics for recycling. The fake recycler picks it up in their trucks, hauls it away for shipping, and makes money by exporting it to Chinese or African "recycling" centers. Nobody's the wiser,' Fosdick writes. Of course, the international community has, in fact, devised a set of rules to control e-waste disposal under the Basel Conventions, but the US — 'the international 'bad boy' of computer recycling — is one of four countries that have not ratified and do not adhere to these international agreements."

Comments

Of course we haven't ratified...

[Radical Moderate]

that socialist treaty! If the free market has decide to let black and brown children wallow in our toxic waste for pennies a day, who are we to argue? All hail the invisible hand!

Not the free market...

[Darkness404]

This isn't the free market working, this is what happens when you create regulations to try to tax people in order to recycle. The vast majority of people really don't care where it goes, so long as they get their money back. Rather than keeping it around and selling it at garage sales, they can make more money getting their money back at a "recycling" center, so when people are so eager to "recycle" to get their money back, it ends up in the hands of the corrupt because the average person doesn't care.

Taxes and regulations don't make people care, it makes people want to game the system. This is a fine example of the government fucking with the free market where the electronics would probably just be traded via garage sales and thrift stores for a few decades until technology improves to easily recycle them.

Re:Not the free market...

[bmajik]

I enjoyed reading your post. Insofar as you are discrediting the garage sale theory, I'm inclined to agree with you.

But then you come kind of unhinged.

The natural state of affairs in the consumer distopia is to, get this, consume without any regard to the consequences

Well, that's not quite true. Replace the word "Consequences" to "Costs", and you are flatly wrong. People respond to _costs_. And the fact of the matter is, for many Americans, the cost of throwing something away is quite low, and there's no reason for them not to do so.

For instance, I live in Fargo, ND. The city landfill is on the northwest edge of town. I've been there several times.

I can tell you what land here costs, and i can tell you the fill/pile-over rate of the landfill, and the population. And from this we, can extract the land acquisition and rent-value of continuing to do nothing more intelligent than simply _stacking garbage on city property_.

The fact of the matter is, that here, it doesn't make economic sense to do much of anything else with our garbage. My in-town residential garbage pickup costs me $9 a month.

Recycling occurs in the fucked-up model of "free market" only if some material in the waste is somehow worth extracting

Can you explain, generally, why people should feel bad about not doing things that you admit aren't worth doing?

The glorious "freedom" to pollute as long as it is somewhere else then you, cause "you got yours and the rest should go get theirs", you mendacious fuck, no?

The electricity your PC used when making your angry screed caused pollution. According to the EPA, the CO2 that you exhaled while composing your response is a pollutant.

Presumably, you feel that your post is so important that the pollution it creates -- pollution i have no choice but to contend with and accept, uncompensated -- was worth the tremendous insight you are offering.

On the other hand, the people dumping garbage in rathole countries for money are at least compensating those countries.

Your real beef is with the governments in these places -- who think so little of their own people that they satisfy garbage-storage obligations by dumping them on their own people, who, in those countries, have NO choice in the matter.

While we should be quick to lay the appropriate amount of evil at greedy bastards who would love nothing more than to pollute you and I to the moon to shave a cent of their own expenses, an honest assessment of the facts will reveal that by far, the worst polluters in the world, in terms of environmental impact, but also in terms of how many humans are harmed without recourse, are governments.

Because this is the USA, if you don't want to see your toxic garbage dumped in China, you can opt not to patronize the companies here whom do business that way.

But if you were in China, you'd have no choice at all.

Governkment Meh

[Archangel Michael]

Lets just form a congressional sub-committee to look at the problem to eventually raise taxes, legislate new regulations.

We can have Obama put one of his cronies in as "eWaste Czar", and make some sort of teleprompter speech about how he's personally saving the world.

I'd say put the EPA in charge, but I'm sure some other agencies will get its panties in a wad and want to get a piece of the action.

Because that is the real solution isn't it?

Re:Money

[0123456]

The environmental movement seems focused on behavioral change, things like, making us recycle things, using less gasoline, etc. It doesn't seem to have a balanced approach to protecting our natural resources and doing all the other things that we want to do in a highly industrialized society.

You seem to believe that most 'Greens' actually care about the environment and the demands for behavioural change are a side effect rather than the goal. 'Green' is where the 'Reds' went after the Soviet Union collapsed and no-one could take communism seriously anymore.

As for 'recycling', the only time it makes any sense is when companies are paying for our junk instead of expecting us to pay to take it away... if no-one is willing to pay for it then it's clearly economically damaging.

Re:Looks like the BAN site rewards hypocrites.

[Anonymous Coward]

Get fucked you warmongering corporate whores

Re:Meh

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Shush, everyone's trying to push communism and socialism. Don't you believe in the community, man ? Seriously, what have you been smoking ? Nothing ? That's just wrong.

Never mind that both negative externalities and information assymetry are temporary market distortions in nearly all cases.

And just forget about pointing out that China, who is aiding and abetting this practice at least, pushing it at the worst is a "socialist" nation, and was massively worse when is was a communist nation with market interference. That could lead one to think that interference in the market would basically lead to Chinese situations in the US (or as the UN prefers to have their disasters : world-wide).

And pointing out that even purely theoretically any market regulation (anything at all that does not respond to supply/demand) is a negative externality on the system as a whole is blasphemy.