November 10, 2008 (Seattle) – The Basel Action Network and the Electronics TakeBack Coalition joined today with 32 electronics recyclers in the United States and Canada to announce that the e-Stewards program, which identifies the most responsible recyclers in North America, is soon to be fully accredited and certified.

The e-Steward Certification will be the continent’s first independently audited and accredited electronic waste recycler certification program. It will forbid the dumping of toxic e-waste in developing countries, local landfills and incinerators; the use of prison labor to process e-waste; and the unauthorized release of private data contained in discarded computers.

“Unfortunately today, most of those companies calling themselves electronics recyclers are scammers,” said Sarah Westervelt, e-Stewards project coordinator at the Basel Action Network (BAN.) “They simply load up containers of old computers and ship them off to China or Africa. By choosing an e-Steward recycler, consumers and large businesses are assured that their old computers and TVs will be safely managed and not simply tossed into a local landfill, processed unsafely by prison laborers, or exported to developing countries.”

The e-Stewards announcement follows Sunday’s gritty exposé on CBS’ 60 Minutes, Following the Trail of Toxic e-Waste; the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s recently aired Electronic Dumping Ground; and a recent episode of the French Canadian Program Panorama, Electronic Waste: The Hidden Face of Recycling (in French). These programs reveal that computers given to recyclers in the United States and Canada are likely to be dumped in China or Africa, where e-waste is causing immeasurable environmental and health problems.

In September, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) also released a report, Electronic Waste: EPA Needs to Better Control Harmful U.S. Exports through Stronger Enforcement and More Comprehensive Regulation, denouncing the lack of government controls and enforcement over e-waste exports. The Electronic TakeBack Coalition and BAN are also pursuing federal legislation to ban national exports. If the legislation passes, the audited certification program will serve as a strong enforcement tool.

“The e-Stewards project is a response to the failure of government and industry to act as responsible global citizens in the age of information technology,” said Jim Puckett, BAN executive director. “It is also a wonderful example of how industry leaders and activists can move mountains when they work together — in this case, move mountains of e-waste to truly responsible recyclers.”

The e-Stewards already include 32 companies in 92 locations that have been qualified by BAN. Today, BAN announced that by early 2010 the program will feature an ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB) certification system with third-party auditing. The funding to create this robust certification program was provided by 14 recycling companies designated as e-Steward Founders.

The e-Steward Founders are Boliden AB, California Electronic Asset Recovery, Cascade Asset Management, ECS Refining, Electronic Recyclers International, GreenCitizen, Hesstech, Metech, Redemtech, RELectronics, the Surplus Exchange, Total Reclaim, Waste Management Recycle America, and WeRecycle!.

“Currently, the truly responsible recyclers in the US and Canada face unfair competition from the thousands of unethical, so-called ‘waste recyclers’ in North America that would more accurately be called ‘waste shippers,” said Neil Peters-Michaud of e-Steward Founder, Cascade Asset Management. “We strongly support a certified, audited program to separate the legitimate recyclers from the low-road operators. We urge consumers and businesses to only use qualified e-Stewards and thus make sure that their old electronics are being safely recycled here at home.”

To view a short film on e-Stewards, E-Stewardship: Taking Responsibility in the IT Age, click here.

For interviews with e-Stewards, contact:

Bob Houghton, President, Redemtech, 614-850-3326
Neil-Peters Michaud, CEO, Cascade Asset Management, 608-316-6637
Mike Wright, CEO, Guaranteed Recycling Experts, 720-377-7700

For more information about:

The e-Stewards Initiative: www.e-Stewards.org
Global e-waste dumping: www.ban.org
The Electronics TakeBack Coalition: www.computertakeback.com

CONTACTS:

Sarah Westervelt;
206-652-5751, swestervelt@ban.org

Jim Puckett
206-652-5555, jpuckett@ban.org

April 3, 2009 – Recently, the Malaysian government decided to no longer accept any CRT glass from the United States, as of December 31, 2008. There appears to be confusion about what role, if any, BAN played in this nation’s decision. Here are the facts:

Fact: CRT tubes and glass are specifically listed as a regulated waste under the Basel Convention. (www.basel.int Annex VIII, A 2010) The Basel Convention defines hazardous waste as a material that is destined for either recycling or disposal that contains toxic constituents listed in Annex I (such as lead) unless it can be shown not to exhibit a hazardous characteristic found in Annex III (such as toxicity). In order to facilitate implementation of the Convention, the Parties created Annex VIII, which was intended to examine various waste streams to determine which wastes do possess both the hazardous constituents and the hazardous characteristics. Thus, if a waste is listed on Annex VIII, it has already been examined by the Parties and shown to be hazardous, and therefore there is little possibility to exempt it from the Basel Convention, other than declaring it as a non-waste because it is not destined for recycling or disposal operations.

Fact: Parties to the Basel Convention (such as Malaysia) are legally bound not to trade in Basel wastes with non-Parties (such as the United States) [Article 4, Paragraph 5 www.basel.int). Malaysia has also ratified the Basel Convention’s Ban Amendment, and has implemented it in a way designed to ban the importation of hazardous wastes from developed countries.

Fact: BAN and ETBC’s e-Stewards program supports CRT glass going into the glass-to-glass market (e.g. for the manufacture of new CRTs) if it is done in compliance with the Basel Convention. Thus, based on a widely-shared interpretation of the Basel definitions, our program requires that, prior to export:

1. The phosphors and other potentially toxic dusts must be removed from the CRT cullet and managed responsibly in developed countries, and
2. The ‘competent authority’ of the importing country must formally consent to accept the cleaned cullet as a non-waste because it essentially meets specifications to be used as a direct replacement feedstock in a primary manufacturing process to create new consumer products without further processing, other than quality control – that is, it is not going to a recycling destination and no further cleaning or processing is needed prior to entering into primary manufacturing.

Action Taken: Because we became aware of the fact that Malaysia was importing cullet as a waste for further cleaning and processing, BAN (whose mission involves pressing for compliance with the Basel Convention and the Basel Ban) sent a letter on October 7, 2008 to the Malaysian competent authority asking for their position on cleaned cullet relative to the Basel Convention. In the letter, BAN iterated its support for glass-to-glass recycling and for the interpretation as non-waste, as described above. We offered to support Malaysia or another Basel country in approaching all the Basel Parties to formally request that cleaned, furnace-ready cullet be explicitly exempted from Basel regulation (for all Basel nations). BAN did not call for a prohibition of the importation but rather offered a long term solution. Instead of accepting the idea we offered (to declare the cleaned cullet a non-waste and work with us to amend the Basel Annexes accordingly), the Malaysian government instead made the decision to stop the import of all CRT glass from the US, a non-Party to the Basel Convention. BAN, of course, has no authority to make decisions for countries on import prohibitions. We continue to seek Basel Convention compliance but at the same time encourage the designation of cleaned cullet going to glass-to-glass primary processing facilities as a non-waste under the Basel Convention.

BAN News Release

June 4, 2009 (Seattle, WA.) – The Basel Action Network (BAN) joined the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB) today in announcing the launch of ANAB accreditation for the certifying bodies that will audit and certify the e-Stewards Certification program. At the heart of the new e-Stewards Certification is an ethical ‘gold standard’ for responsible electronic equipment recycling – the only such standard that will finally put a stop to the export of toxic electronic waste to developing countries; the use of prison and child labor; and the dumping of toxic materials into our local landfills. ANAB provides accreditation to certifying bodies for many ISO standards and now has expanded their scope to include the e-Stewards Certification program which is fully integrated with the ISO 14001 environmental management system standard.

“The e-Stewards Standard provides true accountability for responsible disposal of electronic waste, and with ANAB’s oversight of the certification program, we intend to provide the consumer confidence and value,” Randy Dougherty, ANAB Vice President, said.

“We warmly welcome the vote of confidence from North America’s leading accreditation body and their recognition of the need for a rigorous and ethical certification that consumers can use to finally be assured that their old computers will not end up poisoning children in China or Africa, nor contaminate our own groundwater here at home,” said Sarah Westervelt, BAN’s e-Stewardship Program Director.

After years of frustration while contributing to multi-stakeholder standards development with the U.S. EPA and others, BAN realized that entrenched special interests would never agree to more than the lowest common denominator standards that would unfortunately fail to serve the marketplace of responsible customers and would even continue to allow practices that violate the laws of importing countries. So last year, BAN decided to work independently with the best electronics manufacturers, recyclers, asset recovery companies, refiners, and experts to define a rigorous but practical global standard with environmental, social, and occupational parameters to finally solve the “e-waste anarchy.”

Last fall, CBS’s 60 Minutes program featured BAN and highlighted the rampant practice of sham recyclers exporting toxic e-waste to Guiyu, China rather than ethically recycling it. In China, this highly poisonous waste was processed by impoverished workers using primitive technologies that produce in heavy contamination: for example, children in Guiyu have lead levels in their blood 80% higher than in control populations.

CBS continues to urge consumers to use the e-Steward recyclers. Just last week, BAN exposed another fake recycler that duped the Humane Society in a Pittsburgh, PA into sponsoring a free public e-waste collection event that promised local recycling. Instead, the company, while posing as an ethical recycler, actualy exported the collected e-waste to developing countries.

Jim Puckett, the Executive Director of the Basel Action Network, observes “Corporate customers demand responsible management of their electronic waste, but they have often been duped by an industry that profits from a global shell game of shunting wastes, American jobs and responsibility offshore. E-Steward certification is the first and best independent assurance that enterprise requirements will actually be met.”

In addition to ANAB providing accreditation for the e-Stewards program, SAI-Global will be providing auditor training for ANAB-accredited e-Stewards certifying bodies. The certification is in the final stages of development, with the Final Verification Phase about to begin, resulting in the first accredited certifications in 2009 and a full launch of the certification program to all comers in early 2010.

For more information:

About the e-Stewards Recyclers and Certification Program: www.e-stewards.org

Recent research Report: The EarthECycle Pittsburgh Recycling Scam is available at www.ban.org/Library/PittsburghScam.pdf

Photographs of unethical recycling available at www.ban.org/photogallery

Contact at BAN: Sarah Westervelt, (206) 652-5555, swestervelt@ban.org
Contact at ANAB: Penny Gamache, 800-606-5394, ext. 7275, pgamache@anab.org

Brief excerpt:  “…some of the original backers of R2 are now throwing their support to the more stringent global standard called e-Stewards Standard for Responsible Recycling and Reuse of Electronic Equipment, or simply e-Stewards for short. The e-Stewards standard is now championed by BAN and is accepted internationally as ISO 14001. The regulations are much more detailed than those of R2 and encompass global needs, not just those of the United States.”

Recording of BAN’s Webinar on e-Stewards for the EPEAT Program (Video/WMV) –
September 9, 2009 – Requires the free GoToMeeting® Video Codec
(Right-click to download the video to your hard drive)

BAN asks all consumers to only use “e-Steward” qualified recyclers — a group of industry leaders that will not allow such damaging exports. Further, BAN announced today that they will soon be posting an ongoing report card on their website of all major computer manufacturers and retailers which will give pass/fail grading on whether the corporate policy forbids export to developing countries. Already, Dell and Sony have received high praise from BAN and the Electronic TakeBack Coalition for having committed not to export the e-wastes under their control.

The call to cease unsustainable and unjust exports of techno-trash comes on the wake of yet another major media exposé, PBS’s Frontline, which last night depicted the horrors of primitive electronic waste processing in countries such as Ghana and China. This expose follows a previous 60 minutes report, and a scathing report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) last fall.

“Enough is enough,” said BAN’s Executive Director Jim Puckett. “Our government sits on its hands and refuses to prohibit this type of toxic waste dumping the rest of the developed world has outlawed a long time ago. There’s no excuse for this dirty trade other than pure greed. We have excellent U.S. recyclers and refurbishers here that are sick and tired of losing business to the dumpers. They can do this important job in an environmentally sound and ethical way without pushing costs and harm on to the backs of the children in Africa and Asia.”

In lieu of government action, BAN has over the past years partnered with leading electronics recyclers known as e-Stewards (find them at www.e-Stewards.org) who have agreed to take a cut in profits in order to take the high road and actually process toxic electronic wastes responsibly in the US or other developed countries. The
e-Stewards already include 33 companies in over 100 locations that have been qualified by BAN. Early next year the “e-Steward’s Initiative will become the continent’s first ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB) independently audited and accredited electronic waste recycler certification program that will forbid the dumping of toxic e-waste in developing countries, local landfills and incinerators; the use of prison labor to process e-waste; and the unauthorized release of private data contained in discarded computers.

In early 2010, the e-Stewards program will transition to a full certification that is accredited by ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB). This independently audited, fully accredited electronic waste recycler certification program will forbid the dumping of toxic e-waste in developing countries, local landfills and incinerators; the use of prison labor to process e-waste; and the unauthorized release of private data contained in discarded computers.

BAN and the Electronic TakeBack Coalition are also pursuing federal legislation to prohibit export nationally. To their dismay, a recent bill offered by Congressman Jim Thompson (Califorrnia) and Gene Green (Texas) was insupportable because it would continue to allow exports for reuse similar to what PBS revealed in Ghana.

“The e-Stewards project is a response to the failure of government and some of the industry to act as responsible global citizens in the age of information technology,” continues Puckett. “But it is also a wonderful example of how industry leaders and activists can move mountains when they work together – in this case, move mountains of e-waste to truly responsible recyclers.”

“Currently, the truly responsible recyclers in the U.S. and Canada face unfair competition from thousands of unethical waste recyclers in North America. These companies are more accurately described as waste shippers,” said Marshall Johnson, CEO of Asset Recovery Corp., an e-Steward recycler based in Minnesota. “We strongly support BAN’s efforts and urge consumers and businesses to only use qualified e-Stewards. This is the only way to ensure their old electronics will be safely recycled here at home.

To view a short film on e-Stewards, E-Stewardship: Taking Responsibility in the IT Age, click here.

For more information:

The e-Stewards Initiative: www.e-Stewards.org
Global e-waste dumping: www.ban.org
The Electronics TakeBack Coalition: www.computertakeback.com

Contact:

Jim Puckett: 206-354-0391, jpuckett@ban.org
Sarah Westervelt: 206-652-5751, swestervelt@ban.org