(re) blog: dialogue with Redemtech

Strategies and practices that meet the needs for corporate social responsibility, regulatory compliance and managing IT assets to the highest standards of financial, social and environmental accountability.

Subscribe to this category

60 Minutes Hits the Toxic Jackpot

The CBS News program 60 Minutes just ran a hard-hitting segment titled The Electronic Wasteland on the toxic e-waste trade between the United States and China. It was classic 60 Minutes, featuring human suffering, an apparently unscrupulous businessman, the Chinese underworld, and an intrepid reporter—Scott Pelley—exposing it all. For insiders in the electronics recycling industry, this is an old story. A majority of recyclers increase their profits by shipping hard-to-recycle commodities to buyers in developing countries where the lack of worker safety and environmental regulations have created an e-waste gold rush. Tonight, CBS News became the latest company to profit from this toxic trade.

Beyond Green: Roadmap to Sustainable Computing

Thanks to everyone who attended our presentation at the recent Gartner IT Financial, Procurement & Asset Management Summit in San Diego. Our material was based on a new IDC whitepaper by David Daoud, Beyond Power: IT's Roadmap to Sustainable Computing. We ran a little long, as always happens when people with passion for a topic are given a podium, so I promised to do our Q&A online.

Low Value E-Waste Processing: Are U.S. Scrap Metal Smelters the Missing Link?

In 1977 - before cell phones, CDs and a then-bearish 15-17-cent-a-pound Lead (Pb) market - for a short time I worked overseeing a lead products warehouse. To my surprise, the warehouse consisted of more than 50 lead-base products. Back then, the range of products derived from recycled lead from our smelter next door amazed me. Lead came (the kind you find in Tiffany glass), as well as oil drilling bits, sheet lead, oxide, pigments, an assortment of solders, varieties of lead alloys and ship/boat anodes. One of the best features of the job was interacting with customers and truckers from all across the U.S.

BusinessWeek Exposes the e-Cycling Integrity Gap

I am happy to report that times have changed. When we started Redemtech 10 years ago, many corporate clients questioned the need for responsible electronics recycling. It was common practice in 1998 to use the dumpster for asset disposition, and exporting ewaste to developing countries was perfectly acceptable: not anymore. Most companies now demand responsible management of their surplus electronics, and a few service providers like Redemtech have invested tens of millions to deliver truly accountable results. As BusinessWeek discovered, we are the exception.

A Low Bar Is Worse than No Bar

Earlier this year, I found myself in a hotel bar debating the EPA's prospective certification for electronics recyclers with a respected colleague. He has been personally involved with development of the "Responsible Recycling, or "R2" standard, and was proud of his participation in the grand coalition of manufacturers, industry interest groups, and non-profits. There were many times, he said, when it appeared that diverging stakeholder interests would derail the whole idea of a national standard for e-waste recycling. "In the end, we compromised our principles, but after all," he rationalized, "Minimal standards are better than no standards at all." In the best tradition of large bureacracies, the EPA now appears ready to create a certification which will simultaneously fail in its worthy environmental and social objectives, while delighting those industry interests devoted to keeping e-waste recycling as profitable as possible.

Caring Means Governance

Hypothetically, let's say a financial services company suspects it has lost a couple of unencrypted computers, or more specifically, its auditors think they have. Under the law, they have an obligation to report such a loss.  When they check with their IT asset disposition vendor, none are missing, but two serial numbers don't match. Is it a privacy breach or just bad accounting?

OEMs Are the Greenest!

Let's pretend that we are all big PC manufacturers, and that we want to sell more boxes. Since everybody's talking about being more "green," maybe we could say that it's more environmentally friendly to trade in that old PC on a new one! Yeah, that's it—older PCs aren't worth as much, so companies might have to pay to recycle them. That makes buying new systems cheaper in the long run than keeping the old ones, right? 

E-Wasted, But Planning for a Better Day

I attended the E-Scrap conference in Atlanta last week, where 900 of my colleagues and I spent two days debating the state of electronics recycling. Redemtech is not itself a recycler, but uses partners to process many millions of pounds of electronics each year. So we are part of the industry by association, and we stay in close touch to ensure our downstream vendors are compliant with industry best practices. The various sessions completely ignored a glaring deficiency in the trade: the majority of electronics owners choose NOT to recycle their old computers and other e-junk when they are done with it. Stated more bluntly, the customer doesn't like, or think they need, what we are selling.

The Price of Emission

More and more people are drawing conclusive links between computer technology and carbon dioxide emissions linked by science to global warming and environmental destruction. Experts agree that it is important for representatives of the global information and communications technology industry to understand the correlations between the technology upon which it relies for business operations and growing threats to the world environment.

WEEE: Ready or Not

The European Union's WEEE Directive has been touted as a model for electronics producer responsibility, but many do not realize that years after its passage, the law is only now taking effect—country by country (for example, the Directive went into effect in the U.K. on July 1). From a recycling infrastructure and capacity perspective, the unfortunate truth for WEEE is that Europe is unprepared to accept the tsunami of e-waste that the law will generate, and its implementors' near-term efforts will favor expediency over environmental stewardship.

Responsible Businesses Don't Make Sustainability Choices - People Do

Everyone has a responsibility as an inhabitant of the Earth to do his or her part toward protecting and improving the environment. It is our duty, and desire as parents and grandparents, to do the right thing in support of future generations. 

Customer Service or Lip Service?

Customer Service is in the process. If organizations do not have processes that support the ultimate expectations of the customer, while maintaining profitability and environmental sustainability, they must implement those processes to support strategic goals. The desire to deliver and the capability to do so are separated by the processes and the measurements used to gauge satisfaction. Without support processes, the result is Lip Service.

Everything I Needed to Know about Good Stewardship I Learned from My Grandparents

Good asset management doesn’t cost, it pays. This truth is often missed by corporate leaders who think that asset management is something business has to afford. The hard lessons my grandparents practiced on the land are a model for everyone who needs to do more with less.

Airlines Need Down-to-Earth E-waste Solution

The other day on a cross-country flight, I witnessed something that I found to be a bit disturbing. The airline, like many others today, has limited amenities. No meals, pillows, blankets, or first class seating. They did have, however, in-flight movies. In order to watch those movies, passengers either use their own headphones or they are provided headphones once onboard. 

So far, so good ... until it was time for our final descent.