Here’s to you, Billy Buck
Fire up the Wayback Machine. If you don’t remember the Wayback Machine, then you can probably stop reading this anyway. 
The Wayback Machine belonged to Mr. Peabody. Actually I’m pretty sure he invented it. Mr. Peabody was a white dog who wore black eyeglasses. And a clip-on bow tie. It had to be a clip-on because he wasn't  wearing any clothes. He talked and acted like a professor, and he hung out with a sort of dumb kid with a high voice called Sherman. Some question of history would come up, and Mr. Peabody and Sherman would get into the Wayback Machine, and go back and check it out. Not only would they check it out, they would fix it. Like George Washington would be about to plant a cherry tree, and Mr. Peabody would suggest maybe he should cut it down instead. Or Charles Lindbergh was about to fly to New Jersey, and Mr. Peabody would suggest France. 
So, Wayback Machine, August 29, 1986. The Red Sox are up three and a half games over the Yankees, and they are slipping. Again. They’re twenty games over five hundred, but they started the month twenty games over five hundred. They’re going nowhere. The Yankees, the #$%*&^@ Yankees, are on their heels. Yet another Red Sox season is slipping away. 
And then what happens? For the next three weeks the Sox go on a tear. By September 18th they’re ten games up and the season is basically over. They clinch on the 28th. 
What happened in those three weeks? This is what happened: Bill Buckner stepped up and carried the Red Sox. In those three weeks when a lot of the Sox were flailing around, Bill Buckner batted .350 with a .425 on-base percentage. He struck out exactly twice. In eighteen games he had twenty-one RBIs, that’s a 189 RBI pace. Eight home runs, that’s a 72 HR pace. He was the guy, when the ship was sinking, who didn't panic. He provided the lifeline and the other Sox grabbed on and pulled themselves together and went on to the World Series.
Where, as we all know, Billy Buck made an error in Game 6. Actually, it was Bill Buckner who made the error. Before that, he was Billy Buck, he was one of the guys. After that, and ever since, he turned into Bill Buckner, some foreigner interloper, some goomer wearing idiot black high-tops because he could barely walk, whose only place in Red Sox history is that he lost the World Series. 
If that’s what you choose to remember. But no one loses the World Series. No one lost the World Series. Baseball is a team game. McNamara pulled Clemens. Schiraldi couldn’t close out the Mets. Gary Carter refused to go down. Ditto Kevin Mitchell. Ditto Ray Knight. Bob Stanley made a wild-pitch; Rich Gedman didn’t catch it. The Sox didn’t get it done in Game 7. Team game. 
In August, when the team called the Red Sox were foundering, Bill Buckner carried the team. What does this have to do with recycling? Darned if I know. Somewhere the subject of Bill Buckner came up, and what I remember about Billy Buck is all those days and nights in August and September when you were biting your fingernails down to nothing because the Sox were choking AGAIN, and it was Billy Buck who came up with the hits that kept the team running, and eventually they ran away with it. Team game, team player. 
Maybe that’s what it has to do with recycling, and with protecting the environment in general. Team game. 
We’re all pointed toward the same goals: keep usable stuff from being thrown away; make some money, save some money; keep resources in the economy. It’s a tough game; there are always Yankees with a better deal that’s not really a deal or a budget hammer or an easier way out. If we think we’re in it for ourselves, maybe we’ll start taking those deals. But if we keep on pulling toward the same goals, if we remember it’s a team game, we’ll get there, we’ll beat the damn Yankees. 
Sometimes we’ll get it right: Billy Buck in August. Sometimes we’ll screw up: Bill Buckner, October 25. But it’s a team game. Remember that, and we all get ahead.

Why We Recycle Mattresses, Sort Of

I had the great good fortune this spring to drive up and down long stretches of the Blue Ridge Parkway through North Carolina and Virginia. If you have never done that, you should; it is for sure one of the two or three most beautiful roads in the United States. You should drive it in the spring, before the leaves come out. Then it’s like winning the trifecta. You get long views over the mountains and foothills; you get the first blushes of greens clothing the mountainsides; and you get the incomparable bursts of white and color in the fruit trees and dogwoods and azaleas. You also get no people – you can drive for miles and miles and miles with this most beautiful road in America all to yourself. 

Returning to New Hampshire from one of these trips, I had the equally good fortune to drive the Taconic Parkway up the east side of the Hudson River. Not the grand mountains and long views of the Blue Ridge, but just as beautiful in its own way. Rolling hillsides of orchards and woods and pasture, for miles and miles and miles. Rip van Winkle country, and for all the world little changed since his time.

That drive was pointed toward Northampton, Massachusetts, where I was giving a talk, about mattress recycling of all things. Now mattress recycling is not the most thrilling of topics. Especially when you get to talking about bedbugs, then it gets to be sort of gross. But what I was reminded, driving those days, through those landscapes, is that it’s not really about recycling. It’s not really about mattresses. It’s not really about the “waste stream”. It’s about this beautiful rich country and this one-of-a-kind planet.

Mattress recycling is about a way to live on this planet. It’s about a carry-in, carry-out policy toward Planet Earth. It’s about touching the Earth in our lives in a way that leaves it for others to enjoy after us. 

The Blue Ridge wasn’t always the Blue Ridge. There was a time when it was logged and scraped bare, when it was a desolate landscape of stumps and tangled and rotting brush. The beautiful Blue Ridge I drove this spring is all second growth; it is a landscape recovered from gluttonous exploitation. And we’re still exploiting, as bad or worse than ever. Drive just a few ridges west from the Parkway and there are the stumps not of trees but of whole mountains scraped off and shoved into the valleys next door, to reach a coal seam a few feet thick. There are hundreds of square miles of these flattened mountains and used-to-be valleys (Google “mountaintop removal mining”). Drive a little north into Pennsylvania and there are whole landscapes toxified by mine tailings.

And that’s why mattress recycling is important. Recycling makes possible Blue Ridge Parkways. Not recycling produces mountaintop removal. Recycling makes possible landscapes like the Hudson Valley. Not recycling produces toxic mine dumps. It’s not about the mattresses, it’s about the landscapes. It’s about using the Earth gently, about preserving landscapes for others to enjoy after us, about leaving them the resources to enjoy the Earth as we have. The Earth provides plenty of resources for us to do that, if we use the resources wisely.

That’s why we recycle mattresses.

FIBER MARKETS AT OR NEAR ALL TIME HIGHS

July fiber markets in New England and across most of the country are at five year highs. Mixed Paper is at an all-time record; baled Mixed Paper in truckload volumes is at $110-$120 per ton! Another grade close to its all time high is Sorted Office Paper – now selling for $270-$280 per ton. It was just two and a half years ago that Mixed Paper was valued at $0 (or less), and Sorted Office was selling for $90/ton.

Unlike some previous high markets, this doesn’t look like a spike. Prices have been rising steadily for many months, and there’s no sign of panic or a bubble mentality.

What has happened? Two things: Globalization and Single Stream.

Globalization. Market demand for fiber in the US is now very closely linked to global demand. Inventories in the US have been low and growing demand particularly from Asia has depleted much of the US inventory.

Single Stream. Single Stream recycling is another major factor in the supply/demand situation. As single stream has increased, quality Mixed Paper is harder to find. The low quality fibers that come out of a Single Stream plant are not considered usable in many mills in the US, thanks to glass shards, soiling, other contamination. As a result, much of the Single Stream Mixed Paper is an export only grade, and this drives up prices in US markets. The impact is felt locally. Small paper mills that depend on procuring quality fiber at reasonable prices cannot find or afford these feedstocks. As the global economy forces mills to sell finished goods at more competitive prices (with the competition coming from international mills), high feedstock prices are squeezing these small US mills out of many sales opportunities.

There is no good way to project where markets will go. On one hand, with prices this high and still rising it is nice to be in the business of selling paper right now. On the other hand there is legitimate concern for the survival of local markets in the US if these prices stay unusually high. If local markets continue to shrink, then our dependence on Asian markets will increase, and our options when markets are low will be limited. It was just a couple of years ago in 2008-2009 when we struggled to push low-grade fiber into the market, and those times could easily return.

At IRN, where I work and manage, we don’t have an “official” position about Single Stream. There’s no denying it increases participation in residential recycling. But we don’t think it’s the right option for most business and institutions. In a professional situation it’s straightforward to keep recyclables separated. That gives the organization the maximum financial benefit from recycling, and it supports American markets and manufacturers. That’s a win-win situation, environmentally and financially, and we don’t see any reason to trade that in.

E-Waste “Recycling” in the News

One place you don’t want your used electronics to wind up is in the media. We get asked all the time why we charge money to recycle computers and monitors and TVs, cell phones, Blackberries and other used electronics. The reason we get asked this question is that there are a lot of “recyclers” out there who will take this stuff away for free, or even pay to take it off your hands. Why, we are asked, does IRN charge to recycle electronics when other companies will do it for free.

There’s a simple answer: If someone is “recycling” used electronics for free, they’re exporting containers filled with “e-waste” to China or the Third World. Here’s a very small selection of recent media documenting how much e-waste is dumped from the U.S. to sweatshops and open burn pits in Africa and Asia, and naming some names who would rather not be named.

There are hundreds more. If you want to see things that are really sad and frightening, just Google images or web content for “e-waste China” or “e-waste Africa”. You’ll see what it really means to “recycle” electronics for free. It means whole cities and regions turned into wastelands of toxic smoke and ash and mountains of debris. It means enormous costs in damage to human health and the environment. It’s just that the costs are transferred to some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on Earth.

If that’s what “free” means, shame on all of us.

60 Minutes: The Wasteland
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5274959n&tag=related;photovideo
Boston Globe: Old TVs spark environmental dispute
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/03/02/old_televisions_spark_environmental_dispute/
Business Management: The global e-waste problem
http://www.busmanagementme.com/news/global-e-waste/
Business Week: E-waste: The dirty secret of recycling electronics
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_43/b4105000160974.htm
CBC News: E-waste mounting in developing countries
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/02/22/tech-e-waste-report.html
CNET: E-waste piles up in Nigeria
http://news.cnet.com/2300-1041_3-5911167.html?tag=mncol
CrunchGear: Guiyu: E-waste capital of China
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/04/04/guiyu-e-waste-capital-of-china/
Earth911: Trading company illegally ships e-waste overseas
http://earth911.com/news/2009/09/11/trading-company-illegally-ships-e-waste-overseas/
Earth 911: Ghana a literal ‘digital dumping ground’
http://earth911.com/news/2009/07/14/video-ghana-a-literal-digital-dumping-ground/
Foreign Policy: Inside the digital dump
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/09/23/inside_the_digital_dump
Inhabitat: Electronics Recycling 101: The problem with e-waste
http://inhabitat.com/electronics-recycling-101-the-problem-with-e-waste/
Popular Science: The UN tries to address the international e-waste problem
http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/03/material_world.html
Sacramento Bee: California recyclers find market for toxic trash
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/11/28/3216070/california-recyclers-find-market.html#ixzz17AERNcAU
Scienceblogs: What we waste: A view of e-trash
http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/2007/06/what_we_waste_a_view_of_etrash.php
ShanghaiIST: Bonfire of the e-salvageries
http://shanghaiist.com/2009/08/31/bonfire_of_the_e-salvageries.php
TechNews Daily: Global e-waste problem more dire than realized
http://www.technewsdaily.com/global-e-waste-problem-more-dire-than-realized-0265/
U.S. General Accounting Office: Electronic waste: Harmful U.S. exports flow virtually unrestricted…
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d081166t.pdf

Recycling & Reuse: Worth the Effort? Worth the Effort.

This is a story for everyone who says that recycling and reuse cost too much and aren’t worth the effort, and for everyone who has to deal with those folks.
Newton is a suburban city, population about 85,000, less than ten miles from downtown Boston. When the City opened a new high school in August 2010, it reused and donated locally as much furniture as possible from the old school, but was still left with more than 4,000 items of surplus furniture and equipment that needed to go away. Most of the furniture was packed into the gymnasium and pool area; the rest was scattered throughout the old campus.

The City faced tough challenges. The school is located in a residential neighborhood, hampering access for large vehicles. Loading facilities consisted of a single two-foot high dock accessed by one double door. The surplus was less packed than stacked and jumbled into the gym and pool area, a big 3-D jigsaw puzzle, and there were long carries for the surplus that wasn’t in these locations. The surplus was a mix of a lot of usable stuff with a large fraction too decrepit to be used again.

And because of delays in construction schedule and bid preparation, the City had less than two weeks to complete the project before school started – for RFP, bids, award, mobilization, and implementation. After bids and award, the actual project had to be completed in just three days.

There were three options for the surplus: (1) Throw all the stuff out; (2) Recycle some and throw the rest out; (3) Attempt to reuse as much as possible. The City went through a competitive bid, and selected IRN’s surplus reuse program over the alternatives. Reuse offered environmental and social benefits, but the determining factor was cost. More about that below.

On two days notice, IRN scheduled a 15-man moving crew on each of three days. Seven trailers were loaded on Day 1, nine trailers on Day 2, and seven trailers on Day 3. With such short lead time, IRN divided the surplus between eighteen shipping containers that were loaded directly for overseas destinations, plus five storage trailers that were removed to a local yard. Later these were unloaded and repacked into containers for overseas shipment. In addition, eleven metal recycling containers were loaded with 37 tons of materials that were too worn or damaged to be reused.

At any given time there were between one and three trailers on the loading dock, with an IRN project manager directing surplus into the correct trailer as movers took it from the building. In intervals when there were only one or two trailers at the dock, IRN kept the crew moving and staging furniture as close to the dock as possible, so the next trailer could be loaded efficiently when it arrived. There were also two big dumpsters for pieces too damaged to be reused: one for items that could be recycled as metal, one for mixed debris. IRN’s onsite manager made sure that every item went into the right container.

In all, IRN packed more than 4,200 pieces into 23 trailers and shipping containers. About 2,000 items were shipped to Food for the Poor’s central Caribbean warehouse in Jamaica. Although FFTP ships from Jamaica throughout the Caribbean, most of the Newton North surplus will ultimately be shipped to Haiti for reconstruction after the January 2010 earthquake, and now from floods after Tropical Storm Tomas. Four loads or approximately 700 pieces were shipped to the Fundacion Nuevos Horizontes in El Salvador for community building programs, and four loads were provided to the American Nicaraguan Foundation, whose long-term mission is to construct the 400,000-500,000 homes needed to alleviate the effects of natural disasters and long-term poverty.

What was it they received? AV equipment – 87 items; 170 lab benches; 285 bookcases; 144 storage cabinets; 48 study carrels; 18 wheeled carts; 1,226 chairs; 695 desk-armchairs; 37 couches; 359 full desks; 147 file cabinets; 20 pieces of gym equipment; 33 pieces of kitchen equipment; 40 locker units; 56 shelf units; 87 stools; 518 work and conference tables; plus about 300 other items. Another 37 tons of damaged or unusable items were recycled locally for metal and/or wood content.
And what did it cost? Besides making an incredible difference in the lives of thousands of kids and grownups, besides saving hundreds of cubic yards of landfill space and gaining all the environmental benefits of reuse, what was the bottom line, the dollars and cents bottom line?

Because this was a competitively bid public project, we can answer that question exactly. IRN’s cost to reuse 80% of Newton’s surplus and recycle the remainder was 38% LESS than the next lowest competing bid for recycling and/or disposal.
So the next time some schmo tells you that reuse and recycling aren’t worth it, show them a picture of kids in Jamaica or Haiti sitting in a classroom using the stuff they say we should just toss in a landfill. And show them the price tag. Show them what you already know: that what’s good for the environment and good for society is much more often than not good for the economy as well. Hearts, minds, and wallets, almost always in alignment.

Saying Thanks to Columbia

It’s an understatement to say that Columbia was transformative for my Dad. He was a poor kid from a Depression-beaten family in the Irish ghetto of Dobbs Ferry. In 1939Columbia gave him a $600 scholarship and a part-time job and said “Make it if you can.” Four years later he was an honors History graduate, managing the campus laundry service, and voted Most Likely to Succeed by his classmates. He never forgot the doors that Columbia opened for him, nor the personal potential that Columbia helped him discover.

Most of all, he never forgot the opportunity that Columbia gave him. In 1939 there weren’t a whole lot of schools opening doors to a world-class education for poor Irish kids. Columbia changed his life.

Sometimes wheels turn slowly. I was 50 before I as much as saw the Columbia campus. A country boy by nature, I went to school in New Hampshire and stayed there. Went to a wedding in NYC in 1980, but beyond that New York and Columbia were a different planet.

Along the way my Dad helped me start my own business in recycling, IRN – the Recycling Network. And that, eventually, closed the circle back to Columbia. Two of IRN’s specialties are finding ways to reuse surplus property, and recycling from construction projects. Columbia asked us to take a look at a project that combined the best – or worst – of both.

As part of its Manhattanville development, Columbia acquired Reality House, a former methadone clinic on West 125th Street. Columbia rehabbed two floors into its Manhattanville project offices. The remaining two floors were left as Reality House left them: a mess. There were over 10,000 square feet of partially built-out space: a forest of studs and wiring and door frames. This and the rest of the two floors were packed with the detritus of nearly three decades: old computers and monitors and IBM Selectric typewriters, hundreds of boxes of documents, a thousand or more pieces of furniture, fluorescent lights and fixtures, piles of scrap metal, unused building materials, cardboard boxes filled with clothes and toys and office supplies and Christmas decorations. Three decades of junk, strewn and thrown and jumbled.

Normally a mess like this is a demolition project; recycle what you can, throw the rest away. But that wasn’t possible at Reality House. Among the documents were patient and financial records. The computers also presumably contained confidential patient data. The monitors, fluorescent bulbs and fixtures all contained hazardous materials. All of these materials are regulated and have to be handled properly. There were tens of thousands of pounds of usable building materials, doors and windows, wiring, all of that surplus furniture, all in good condition and 100% reusable. And there was Columbia’s very serious commitment to the environment and sustainability. Disposal simply wasn’t an option.

Where most folks would see nothing but problems, IRN and Columbia saw opportunity. Working with Columbia’s Manhattanville management team and Community Affairs office, we developed a project that brought community-based groups together to take advantage of bright nuggets in the Reality House mess: Build It Green! NYC (BIG), a Queens-based nonprofit retail that gathers and resells salvaged and surplus building materials at deep discounts to New York residents and small businesses; Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW), a nonprofit that works with New York’s unions to bring women into skilled, higher-paying jobs in the construction trades through pre-apprenticeship training programs; and The School of Cooperative Technical Education (SCTE), an alternative school within the NYC Department of Education that provides students with the opportunity to learn traditional trades-based skills along with a variety of state-of-the-art technologies.

Over the course of a month in July and August 2009, NEW and SCTE crews removed nearly 70 tons of reusable and recyclable materials from Reality House. More than 3,000 pieces, over 10 tons, of furniture and building materials will be injected straight back into New York communities through Build It Green. Three shipping containers were loaded with surplus furniture and supplies for disaster relief in Nicaragua and Jamaica. More than 21 tons of scrap metal were recycled, along with 11 tons of paper and cardboard (the paper was shredded to assure destruction of confidential information). The computers, monitors, fluorescents, and other hazmat-containing wastes were recycled to the highest regulatory and environmental standards. Overall, more than 90% of accumulated Reality House “junk” was reused or recycled; less than 10% was thrown away.

But most important, more than 30 disadvantaged young men and women from NEW and SCTE got serious job training. Training in tool use, construction and dismantling techniques, electrician skills, safety, teamwork, communications. Deconstruction is the most actively growing (right now the only growing) field in the construction trades. There’s pressing need for workers trained in deconstruction, and before Reality House New York had essentially no work crews with these capabilities. NEW has pressed ahead with Columbia’s Harlem Small Business Development Center, turning its Reality House experience into a permanent enterprise. IRN has proposed NEW workers on more NYC-area jobs, and several of the NEW women have been offered interviews or positions in union apprenticeship programs.

Closing my Dad’s circle. Columbia offered my Dad a shot when no one else had the concern or sympathy to do so. Nearly 70 years later, Columbia is still at it, still offering opportunities to poor kids from the community. My Dad passed away in 2001, but he wouldn’t be surprised. He’d be proud, and he’d be happy that my own firm, the firm he helped start, was able to be part of it. But mostly he’d be happy for the kids, getting the same kind of chance from Columbia that he did back in 1939.

The Problem With the Problem With Recycling

Boston.com recently published a couple of anti-recycling columns by Jeff Jacoby. I can’t bring myself to write down the link. If you want you can find them easily enough. They’re standard diatribe. Recycling is a pain in the neck. Recycling costs more than throwing stuff away.

Backed by standard sources for persons with Mr. Jacoby’s point of view: The Heartland Institute (Wikipedia: “The Heartland Institute questions the scientific consensus on climate change, arguing that global warming is not occurring and, further, that warming would be beneficial if it did occur.”); the Policy and Environment Research Center (“PERC claims that government policy is the root cause of much environmental degradation.”). Neutral sources, like the Pope is neutral on contraception.

The central problem with Mr. Jacoby’s argument, and almost all of the invective thrown at recycling, is that it regards trash as waste. And yes, probably the cheapest way to get rid of something that’s a waste is to compact the heck out of it and toss it into a hole in the ground. Mr. Jacoby’s solution.

But in fact, trash is resources. Paper is a highly engineered product, as is aluminum, as is steel, as is plastic, glass, wood. Ignored by the Jeff Jacobys of the world is the fact that these resources are extracted and produced at a huge economic and environmental cost, and that this finite globe of ours is quickly running out of many of them.

Here are some of the things the Jeff Jacobys conveniently forget:

To make (non-recycled) paper, you have to cut down lots of trees, and you don’t cut them down from real forests that support real populations of birds and animals. You cut them from plantations that are all the same species and all the same age; think cornfields. More and more, you cut them down in places like Brazil or Indonesia where labor is cheap and environmental laws are slim. Making (non-recycled paper) uses nasty chemicals and lots of energy. Most of the jobs that come with making (non-recycled) paper come in places that are far away.

To make recycled paper, you don’t cut down trees, you don’t turn forests into plantations, you use a lot less energy, you use (and throw away) a lot less chemicals. And most of the jobs that come with recycled paper are close to home.
To make (non-recycled) steel, aluminum and other metals, you dig huge holes in the ground (from which you waste about 98% of what you dig up). You use huge machines and factories, with huge environmental impacts and energy consumption. Almost all of these holes in the ground, machines, and factories are in places overseas where labor is cheap and environmental laws are slim, and that’s where the jobs are, too.
To make recycled steel and other metals, you don’t dig holes in the ground, you don’t need giant machines and intensely polluting factories, you use a small fraction of the energy, and most of the jobs are local.

To make (non-recycled) plastic, you start with oil. If I’m not mistaken, the story that dominated Mr. Jacoby’s own newspaper for several months this year had to do with an oil spill – the risks we take every day filling up our cars and using plastics we don’t recycle, and the incredible cost when something goes wrong. To make recycled plastic, you don’t need an oil well.

When you finish with a newspaper or a cereal box or a soda bottle or tin can, you are holding a valuable raw material. The real question is, what’s the best way to get that raw material into the economy. Is it to dig holes or cut down trees or build big factories far away, or drill another oil well? Or is it to move the resource a few miles to a place it can be reprocessed and put back into the economy locally, creating local jobs and supporting local economic activity on the way?

We have invested a huge amount of money over hundreds of years into the systems that turn virgin raw materials into products. Comparatively, we have invested very little money and very little time into systems to turn used products back into new products. The reason recycling can be made to appear so inefficient is that we give it such scant attention; we treat it as a way to handle waste, not as a way to produce raw materials.

Mr. Jacoby opened his column with a good point: Recycling can be a pain in the neck. Having lived recently with a real pain in the neck (camping trip, crappy pillow), I’m pretty sure the sensible response is not “Kill the whole body.” The sensible response is, “Fix the pain in the neck.” Recycling is a sensible and cost-effective way to get valuable resources into the economy. It takes thought and effort, more thought and effort than writing a column of criticism, but the return is worth it.

Of Locusts and Electronics

As recyclers we have been dealing with electronics for a long time now. Some of you may remember Digital’s electronics recycling facility here in Contoocook, NH, which is where we cut our teeth, Dana working with the Northeast Resource Recovery Association, ML with the State of NH. The name “Digital” all by itself tells you how long we’ve been at this.

It still amazes us, after all these years, that some folks, some of our buddies, some really good recyclers, still think there’s some sort of magic bullet in electronics recycling. A “free” magic bullet. It’s been two years since GAO’s report KO’ed a whole bunch of lousy electronics recyclers. But here in 2010, right here in Massachusetts, there’s another round of operators pushing “free” electronics recycling, and there are folks who are taking the bait. This inspired ML to write the following:

Of Locusts and Electronics

It’s like locusts. They go underground. They seem to disappear. Then they come back. “They” is crappy electronics recyclers. They show up and they tell you things like this: “We recycle to the highest environmental standards.” Or this: “We are an EPA-approved recycler.” Or this: “Our recycling process protects the environment.”

Then they tell you something like this: “At no cost.” Or: “For free.” Or: “We will pay for your used electronics.”

Then they get your business and they recycle – or “recycle” – for a few months or a couple of years. Then they go away. They always go away.

They go away for a really simple reason: There is no such thing as “to the highest environmental standards” and “for free.” There’s no such thing as “Our recycling protects the environment” and “we’ll pay you.” Eventually people figure that out, and the recyclers, the “recyclers”, go away.

Like locusts. They show up. They blight the landscape for a while. They wear out their welcome. They go away.

One thing about these locusts, though. You have to invite them in your door. If you don’t invite them in, they can’t come in. You can keep them out.

What’s weird is that so many people invite them in. Weird but understandable. “Free” is a pretty tempting number. It’s especially tempting if you’ve got a budget to meet and it’s a budget that’s getting sliced every year.

If one of these outfits calls you and you like the idea of “free” but care about “environmental standards”, here’s what you can do. Here’s what you really must do, because if it turns out they’re a locust and you let them into your electronics, that can be really bad for things like liability and publicity and job security.

Get in your car and go visit their place. Heck, if they’re “free” they’re saving you a bunch of money, right, so you can afford a little time to go check them out. Go check out their “high environmental standards”. If they really have high environmental standards, and not “high environmental standards” you should take the “free” and you should tell every single one of your friends to do the same thing. And you should buy the company, because that company is worth billions of dollars.

A lot of really smart people have tried to put “free” together with “high environmental standards” in electronics recycling for a lot of years. It just doesn’t work. There just isn’t enough value in the materials. If you are an electronics recycler and you have high environmental standards you’re not free. If you’re free you don’t have high environmental standards. It’s as simple as that.

Which is why the locusts always disappear.

So if one of these folks knocks on your door, GO CHECK THEM OUT! It’s a really simple way to save yourself a whole lot of hurt.

Relief Efforts Benefit from Donation of Surplus Furniture

Contact: Kelly Waldram Cramer

WARRENSBURG, MO (June 16, 2010) - University of Central Missouri Housing recently donated surplus furniture from Nattinger and Bradshaw residence halls to relief efforts in Spanish Town, Jamaica and San Pedro Sula, Honduras. The 1,932 pieces and included bed frames, ladders, desks, and chairs slated for Honduran and Jamaican orphanages or residential schools.

This July, the Ellis Complex, which includes North Ellis, East Ellis, and South Ellis residence halls, and the Hawkins Hall apartment building also will donate surplus furniture. Hawkins will contribute over 160 pieces of furniture, including couches, box chairs, love seats, mattresses. The shipment also will contain as many camp beds as space will allow. The Ellis Complex will contribute 2,778 pieces of furniture, including beds, chairs, and desks. Warrensburg Salvation Army received the furniture from Foster Hall, while mattresses are being recycled through the company University Sleep.

“We had a lot of property to replace, and were trying to figure out what to do with all of the furniture" said Brenda Moeder, associate director of University Housing. "This fits with the ‘reuse, recycle, and reduce’ attitude we foster at UCM. Not only were we able to do a good thing for others by donating furniture to them, but this is also an environmentally friendly decision,”

UCM Housing employed the Institution Recycling Network Surplus Reuse Program to undertake the project. IRN networks with dozens of charitable and relief organizations that use millions of pounds of surplus every year.
“The needs are endless, and everything we toss aside in the United States could be used by someplace in Jamaica,” said Mark Berry of IRN.

For more information about this or University Housing, contact the Kelly Waldram Cramer, marketing manager for housing and Greek life, at 660-543-8121.
http://www.ucmo.edu/news/furniture.haiti.cfm

We Have Found the Enemy, and It Is Us

Yes, the oil spill in the Gulf is a really bad thing, but I wish they taught statistics in high school.

Because statistics tell you that is was just a matter of time until we had a catastrophic spill in the Gulf. There are thousands and thousands of oil and gas wells in the Gulf, each one with a very small probability of failing. BP and Deepwater Horizon drew the short straw.

It’s particularly disheartening to hear the blame being piled on BP. As if, yeah, BP would cut corners so it could drive its share price down by half. And secretly plot months if not years of public relations nightmare. And cunningly position itself to pile up tens of billions of dollars in liabilities that will stretch on for decades. Check for the insider trading; I’m sure the top dogs at BP have been shorting their own stock.

Statistics said that if you keep drilling in the Gulf, eventually you’d have a catastrophic spill. The problem is the drilling in the Gulf.

The problem is the succession of “leaders” in Washington and Concord and 49 other state capitals who have failed to devise sensible energy policy in nearly four decades since the first oil crisis.

The problem is nationwide fuel economy that hasn’t improved in 20 years.

The problem is policies that encourage and manufacturers who push and consumers who buy SUVs and pickup trucks that they don’t need.

The problem is policies that promote cars and trucks and airplanes over other ways to move people and products. (For example, policies that say gas taxes can be used for roads and nothing else, or policies that say our most urgent transportation priority is to build 20 miles of eight-lane highway so more cars and trucks can travel easier. Those would be New Hampshire policies.)

The problem is every state that decides not to use local resources to produce electricity, but to rely instead on oil and coal and gas that are produced far away, in places like the Gulf.

The problem is every family that buys, heats, and air conditions a 5,000 square-foot home.

The problem is every new house that’s built without solar panels on the roof.

The problem is every person who decides that the way to enjoy a lake or pond or ocean is to drive a motorboat, or the way to enjoy winter is to drive a snowmobile, or the way to enjoy the woods is to drive a four-wheeler.

The problem is every company that opens an office accessible only by car.

The problem is every local planning board that has allowed or continues to allow development of strip malls and big boxes and suburban corporate campuses, promoting sprawl over cluster.

The problem isn’t the driller. It’s the well, because statistics said eventually a well was going to fail. And there’s plenty of blame to spread around for the well. Almost all of it is right in the mirror.