The World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association (WR3A) is a business consortium dedicated to the reform of the trade of e-waste. The WR3A is inspired by fair trade organizations.
Contents
History
WR3A is a Fair Trade association (tradename Fair Trade Recycling reserved in 2013) established to improve the export markets for surplus electronics and e-waste. WR3A was conceived in 2006 following a visit to China by a group including a USA electronics recycler (American Retroworks Inc.), a University of California Davis recycling program director, and a Seattle recycler with a zero-export policy. The group visited three of China's semi knock down factories. Those factories purchased USA computer monitors which still have functional CRTs. The CRTs are knocked down to the bare tube, which is inserted into a new TV or monitor case, complete with new tuner board, etc. WR3A founders observed that the junk CRTs imported into China's Guiyu province were leftovers of functional CRTs purchased by the factories. While the Chinese government, which invested and owns new CRT manufacturing factories, shut many of these operations down as gray market activities in 2006, many of the assembly factories were relocated to other countries.
WR3A proposed to form a coalition of USA companies to export only the good CRT monitors directly to the reuse factories, removing imploded, damaged, screen-burned, older, or non-compliant raster (e.g. Trinitron) CRTs from loads destined for CRT factories. The USA companies which remove and recycle the bad 1/3 of CRTs would benefit from higher prices, and the Chinese factories would bypass the sorting villages such as Guiyu. The WR3A was swamped by orders from Asian factories that year.
The Chinese government, which took over most of the new CRT manufacturing capacity worldwide in the 1990s, opposed the import of used CRTs. Many of the factory owners, relocated their businesses in 2006 and 2007 to countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. Others relocated their used monitor sourcing operations only to Hong Kong and Vietnam, trucking the CRTs overland to Chinese factories. The USA has its own CRT refurbishing factory, Video Display Corp of Tucker, Georgia.
The organization pursues a strategy of increasing used electronics exports through fair trade agreements, under the principle that if used computer exports are outlawed, only outlaws will export used computers.
The organization has members in South America, Africa, Asia, North America, and Europe, dedicated to defending legitimate used electronics exporters from what the organization considers false and defamatory declarations as "e-waste" and "toxics externalization".
Recent activities
In April 2013, WR3A held a "Fair Trade Recycling Summit" at Middlebury College in Vermont. The Summit brought together researchers from Memorial University (Canada), Pontificia Universidad Catholica de Peru, University of Southern California (USA), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), representatives of the USA International Trade Office, Basel Convention Secretariat, Interpol, and several used electronics importers from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The group deliberated on beneficial development in emerging markets through electronics reuse and repair (labelled "Tinkerer's Blessing" after Yuzo Takahashi's 2000 technology history, A Network of Tinkerers.). The role of electronics repair and reverse engineering in development was contrasted with the so-called "Resource Curse" of economic development through natural resource exploitation. Middlebury students and presenters discussed whether a more balanced approach to recycling secondary materials may be warranted. A follow up meeting between WR3A and Interpol was held in July 2013. In November, 2013, Interpol announced a new research program to study the used electronics trade before continuing arrests of African importers (Project Eden).
The debate between Fair Trade Recycling advocates and the anti-export organization Basel Action Network was profiled in USA Today (September 26, 2013), in Discovery Magazine, and in NIH in 2006
In July 2012, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, announced a 5-year research project to study and map the routes of used electronics, WEEE, and "e-waste" exports. WR3A is a partner in the research grant, along with researchers from universities in Peru and California. The first year, the group will document efforts to develop a "Fair Trade Recycling" model in Mexico (see NPR, PBS, AP, coverage), and then research the possible application of the model to Peru, Bangladesh, and China.
WR3A formerly adapted and registered the tradename "Fair Trade Recycling" in 2012.
WR3A collaborated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology for publication of MIT's January 2012 study on E-waste generation and exports. WR3A provided researchers with detailed reconciliations of 3 years of exports from WR3A members. MIT compared WR3A data to corroborating data from ISRI, USEPA, Basel Secretariat (Ghana, Nigeria) studies.
In May 2011, WR3A was interviewed as part of an "e-waste" by German news magazine ZDF.Kultur, which investigated the assumptions that African imports were "primitive" and linked exports to Egypt's Green Revolution.
In March, 2011. WR3A was profiled in Motherboard.tv, for the organization's case that reduced exports of used electronics by "stewards" was having unintended consequences.
In October, 2010, WR3A announced a partnership with Basel Action Network to reduce unnecessary breakage and destruction of working computer monitors in California, under California SB20 laws. This followed a report critical of California "cancellation" policies published in the Sacramento Bee on July 19, 2010.
On July 30, 2010, Discovery News presented an analysis contrasting WR3A's "fair trade" engagement approach with the Basel Action Network's (BAN) "trade restriction" approach, and abstained from choosing sides.,
On May 15, 2009, National Public Radio's (NPR) program Living On Earth profiled one of WR3A's members - a women's cooperative doing TV repair and recycling in Mexico.
In January 2009, the organization presented statistics and a film at the Keynote Address of the CES 2009 in Las Vegas. The statistics demonstrated that the rate of growth of internet access is much higher in countries with very low incomes. It is logically unlikely that this growth can be achieved with new computers. The WR3A also presented film of the reuse and refurbishing operations which demonstrate proper recycling practices and best available practices in these ten countries.
The WR3A was contracted as a consultant to the US Environmental Protection Agency for its July 2008 publication Electronic Waste Management in the United States.