Wrong end of the stick firmly grasped over electronics recycling

We may have muttered, over the years, that it’s not necessarily the brightest and best of a generation that pursues politics as a career. Our latest test of this calumny is a report on electronic waste from the environment committee of the House of Commons.

The tsunami of electronic waste was throwing away valuable resources vital to a sustainable future, the report published on Thursday said.

Globally, thrown-away computers, smartphones, tablets and other electronic waste have a potential value of $62.5bn each year from the precious metals they contain, including gold, silver, copper, platinum and other critical raw materials such as tungsten and indium.

No, they don’t. That is the - theoretical - value of the metals once collected, processed, refined and made available for reuse. There are costs associated with doing all of that, the largest being the collection. This means the expenditure of resources to do all of those things.

We also know that it requires the expenditure of more resources to do those things than is gained by having done them. This is simple in a market economy - anyone trying it makes a loss which is why it is not done. A loss is the price system’s method of telling you you’re doing something stupid - or, here, expending more resources to recover fewer resources.

By the way, anyone who thinks that human labour, a major component of the resources required, is not an economic resource can come around and mow our lawn on Saturday. For free, obviously, because their time is worth nothing, is it?

From the report itself:

We ask the Government to set ambitious long-term targets including for the collection, re-use and recycling of E-waste to be undertaken to a very high standard. We ask that these targets focus on reducing resource consumption; the environmental impact of the industry and on capturing and retaining value including critical raw materials.

Therefore, to save resources, we must not recycle electronics - exactly the opposite of the committee’s recommendation.

We ask the Government to ban the practice of intentionally shortening the lifespan of products through planned obsolescence.

That could actually be useful, oddly enough. The thing to do would be rescind the ban on the use of lead in tin solder. The reason for the lead being to prevent the growth of tin whiskers which, after a few years of use, cause electronics to go “zzzzzt!” and short circuit. So, rescinding the last environmental rule might be a good start to the new one.

Our high streets are under severe pressure and current regulations, coming into force from 2021, could unfairly entrench the competitive advantage of online retailers and marketplaces like Amazon. As a matter of urgency, and at the latest by the end of 2021, online retailers and marketplaces must have an equal obligation to collect electronic waste from customers. To prevent take-back only being offered at remote, inconvenient warehouses, we believe that the exemplary innovation shown by some companies should become a minimum—meaning all large online retailers and marketplaces must arrange and pay for like-for-like electronic waste collection from a customer’s home on delivery of new electronics. They must also offer to collect any electronic waste defined as “small” at the same time.

Even if we were to desire an electronics recycling system that isn’t the way to do it. Instead we should impose a deposit upon each piece of equipment which would be repaid - in full - when the piece is handed into a recycling centre. That would be the actual place where the recycling factory is, not even a network of collection places.

For we do have excellent recycling schemes for metals. Some 99% of all gold ever produced is recycled and there’s hardly a hamlet in the country where you cannot enter an ounce or two into that system. The reason being that it has value. Such value means that we can rely upon simple capitalist greed to get it to the refiner.

So, if we want thing which do not have value to be collected assign - twist the price system - a value so as to invigorate those covetous juices. A £10 deposit on every laptop will have - just as an example you understand - the Boy Scouts running a collection every whatever Bob a Job week is called now. Possibly more pertinently the electronic waste that is ink jet cartridges can be handed in, for money, in any town because they’re worth money as things to be refilled.

So, the considered thoughts of the ruling class seem to be that we should do something we shouldn’t be doing, do it in the wrong way and not do the thing which would aid in solving the problem identified. It might be that it’s not a calumny to posit that the brightest and best of a generation don’t go into politics.