Robin has presented a number of interesting facts relating to mining and the environment (as have Brian Ellis and a few others), and I'm glad that he's enjoying the exchange (as am I). I see the facts that he has offered as items that should be included in the kind of rigorous cost-benefit analysis that I have been asserting is needed and should be paid for. Without the analysis, one simply doesn't know how the facts relate. Surely no one would want to claim that subsidizing recycling (no matter how much it costs) is better than tolerating the amount of additional mining that would otherwise have to be conducted to extract the necessary metals to build electronic products. There has to be some upper limit to what is reasonable to pay, but without the analysis, how would the limit be set? What the market will bear?

It is sometimes overlooked that the money spent on subsidizing recycling is money that is made unavailable for other, perhaps more socially valuable, purposes. It has been observed in this forum on many occasions that electronic products account for a tiny fraction of the uses for metals. Hence, even if subsidized recycling were to totally eliminate the use of virgin metals in electronic products, apart from some symbolic value, it seems to me that the effect on the mining industry would be unnoticeable - like spitting in the ocean, as the saying goes. New mines would still continue to be opened. So the benefits (e.g., lives saved) need to be quantified and compared with the predicted dollar figure for the costs.

As an example of what I'm talking about, Robin's statement that "metal mining produces 45% of all toxics release by all USA industries" needs to be put into context. What is the environmental impact of that release? Are there alternative, perhaps more effective, means to reduce the toxics release? How much would the toxics release be reduced if electronic products were to cease being discarded but totally recycled? What would be the environmental benefit of this much reduction? How many fewer people will die or be sickened as a result? How does the allocated cost of implementing more effective controls on toxics release from mining compare to the cost of making people pay to recycle their electronic products? Are there countries that are tolerating uncontrolled mining that criticize the US for not agreeing to force people to limit carbon dioxide emissions? Global warming is
controversial, but the evils of uncontrolled mining are obvious. How can attention be brought to bear on the sins of these countries to bring about significant change?

If, Robin says, the market has been distorted by archaically low lease rates functioning as a subsidy, then it would seem that the appropriate (and much more effective) response to the stimulus would be to work to raise the rates (and therefore the price of virgin metals). The rates should be at least high enough to cover the cost of administering the leases and enforcing the environmental regulations. Raising the rates might be all it would take to make recycling pay for itself. Even if getting buy-in by all the parties involved were to prove difficult or impossible, at least the focus would be on the real issues. Such an effort would in my opinion be far nobler for environmental activists to undertake than to make unsubstantiated claims about the risks of uncontrolled disposal of electronic products. If they really desire meaningful results and not just increased donations, the
activists should go back to focusing on real rather than invented problems.

In a posting two years ago I called "Gnats and camels" I commented that even though it is well established that putting lead into paint and gasoline results in lead poisoning, there are countries today that still tolerate the practices, with virtually no public outcry. Had just a few percent of the money already spent by industry (and the activists) to get lead out of electronic products been spent addressing the real causes of lead poisoning, lives might have been saved. A similar argument can be made for spending a small fraction of the money spent pushing for mandatory recycling on documenting the need. A source of funding should be found to accumulate the facts and figures of the kind that Robin has provided, and to tie them together and make them understandable by rigorous analysis. How much better this would be than the handwaving, appeals to intuition and emotion, and outright
deception that we are so used to seeing from the activists.

The most that I can see being claimed for the money spent for getting lead out of electronic products is what was stated recently by Thomas Ahrens, "lead free is a needed relaunch of learning and training, to understand what we are doing, after loosing a lot of know-how when for short term economic success the knowing are sent into retirement before full matureness of the young follow-ups." In other words, the engineers got paid to do some interesting research and development, and benefited from what they learned. Beyond that, a small reduction in lead mining will be offset by a small increase in tin mining. How much will the world benefit from subsidized recycling?

Gordon Davy
Baltimore, MD
[log in to unmask]
410-993-7399



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