I thank Gordon for his reply to my post. As usual, I agree with most,
though not quite all of what he has said. While individuals who take
advantage of the political climate to further a particular agenda are base
opportunists, vilifying them will have little effect on the situation.
Stepping back a bit, we might ask why people are receptive to their
arguments in the first place. You might propose hysterical fear of unknown
poisons. But the real answer, I believe, is a climate that has resulted
from several decades of high-profile environmental problems created by a
number of irresponsible industrial concerns. This is truly unfortunate,
because when industry now acts in good faith and backs up their plans with
good science, people are not inclined to believe it. At least at the
present point in time. The pendulum swings both ways and this will not be
the case forever. But right now, we are suffering the fallout from actions
of a group of past industrial leaders who have made life very difficult for
the rest of us. These folks have unwittingly given the anti-development
groups all the ammunition they could ever hope for. If it weren't for
situations like Love Canal, Three-Mile Island, the Monongahela River
catching fire, the Exxon Valdez and various and sundry Super-Fund sites, the
hysterical cries for lead-free would be ignored by a disinterested public.
I'm afraid that we have been our own worst enemies.
The road back to a reasonable situation where we can sit down with
interested parties and discuss cost-benefit analyses along with scientific
results will unfortunately be a long one. This is in no small part due to
the polarization that has come about. That is why derogatory name calling,
though satisfying and often well-deserved, is counter-productive.
As for the invisible hand popularized by Adam Smith, I agree that most
decisions are made on economic grounds and things generally will happen on
their own when there is a payoff. While this will produce the most
economically efficient result, this is not necessarily the situation we care
to live with. For example, the point of maximum cost-benefit in managing a
given pollutant might entail an amount of human disease that a majority of
people are uncomfortable with. At this point, we can make a rational
decision to forgo some of the economic gains in order to reduce the human
cost to a more acceptable level. The hand of the market often needs to be
tempered with non-economic wisdom. While economic choices can be made
fairly quickly, with clear criteria and relatively few people involved,
political input is by nature slow, contradictory and involves large numbers
of people, some of whom are ignorant and who often hate each other. This is
the burden of democracy.
With regard to recycling becoming widespread only when it is profitable,
that is undoubtedly true. But just like in product development, we don't
wait until it is proved beyond any doubt that we can make a profit in a
given market. We often invest time and money years in advance to be ready
to take advantage of a situation that we believe will happen in a particular
time frame. I think that is exactly our situation with landfills, at least
in some parts of the country (substitute your own country for international
readers). In these geographical areas, failure to reduce the solid waste
stream will result in large economic hardship in the not-too-distant future.
So it makes sense to develop the technology and markets now, even if it
requires investment, to avoid much higher costs later. You make an
excellent point that electronics is only a small percentage of that waste
stream. If we can make an impact, even a small one, why not? I design
circuits, not milk jugs, so I do what I can.
Besides, it's not unreasonable to expect that the amount of electronics in
the waste stream will increase in the future. I have no interest whatsoever
in a toaster that talks to me and is connected to the internet, but
marketing folks assure me that we may soon be designing such valuable produc
ts. This stuff is clearly destined for the trash heap along with lots of
similarly useless gadgets.
Regards,
Seth Goodman
Goodman Associates, LLC
-----Original Message-----
From: Leadfree [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Davy, Gordon
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 8:19 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [LF] Recycling and irresponsibility
Seth Goodman has questioned my assertion that recycling end-of-life
electronics is a waste of money. He says, "the motive for recycling is the
reduction in volume of our solid waste stream."
First we need to remember that end-of-life electronic products constitute
one percent of municipal solid waste. If it hadn't been for activists
looking for an issue, I doubt that anyone would have even considered such a
minor constituent. Also, in response to Brian Ellis's comment, the amount of
mining and refining that would be avoided by electronics recycling is too
small to notice, as I'm sure that the leadfree life-cycle analysis will
conclude. If the activists can't find a bigger opportunity than this to go
after, they should declare victory, return the remaining money in their
treasuries to their donors, and dissolve their organizations.
The motive for recycling should be to reduce the cost of handling solid
municipal waste. If due to local situation the cost of disposal is higher,
then in that region recycling of some things might turn out to be an
economical alternative. But if it turns out that loading the refuse in a
truck and hauling it five hundred miles away to an acceptable location is
less expensive, then that is what should be done. (Brian, high-value scrap
already gets recycled.) Economics, not idealism. Adam Smith's "invisible
hand" will make it happen automatically. In fact, if recycling makes
economic sense, then there is no need for any deliberative or legislative
body to take any action to promote it, other than to ensure that the costs
are accurately known. To that end, governments can institute a "pay as you
throw" policy, to ensure that the amount that people are charged accurately
reflects the cost of disposal, and is not being subsidized by tax money.
Where this has been tried, it has reduced the volume by a lot more than
diverting all electronic products would. See
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/payt/ .
Mr. Goodman says "I might also suggest to Gordon that he try to avoid
pairing every occurrence of the word environmentalist with irresponsible.
While he never directly states that all environmentalists are irresponsible
propagandists, ..."
I don't know what fraction of all environmentalists is irresponsible, and it
doesn't really matter. It's the irresponsible ones who are causing the
problem. These are the ones who love to talk about greedy irresponsible
industrialists. I thought about including "greedy" in my characterization of
them - perhaps introduce an acronym: GIEAs. At least industrialists admit to
being in business to make money. The GIEAs exploit people's concern for the
environment to pursue their own selfish ends. Edward Szpruch identified an
additional source of funding (grants to research people) that I hadn't
considered. It must be tempting to people who need to raise money, to try to
frighten people into supporting them - it seems to work so well. And if you
have to mislead them to accomplish your ends, you can always rationalize
"Well, it's for a good cause."
Maybe it would help if responsible environmentalists would distance
themselves from the irresponsible ones by publicly criticizing their
tactics. Their silence might be interpreted by some as condoning them.
Gordon Davy
Baltimore, MD
[log in to unmask]
410-993-7399
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