BAN finds trouble in its own backyard

the Seattle-based group that manages the e-Stewards natural philosophy usage certification program, has revoked that certification for Total Reclaim, saying the city firm “was known by BAN’s e-Trash Transparency Project (an electronic trailing program) to have exported mercury-containing liquid crystal display (liquid crystal display) monitors to metropolis.”

BAN has posted many documents regarding the Total Reclaim state of affairs to its web site, including associate “evidentiary report” and a statement from Total Reclaim’s Craig Lorch and Jeff Zirkle apologizing for the lapses in certification protocol.

“We are terribly sorry that we have a tendency to have disillusioned our business, our customers, our employees and all those that have believed in North American country,” write the duo. Lorch and Zirkle also write, “Economic challenges never excuse wrong behavior. The reality, though, is that squeezed by plummeting commodity prices; increasing labor costs; long, fixed-price contracts; and, especially, a dramatically increasing volume of flat-screen devices, we created a short-run business call to export materials to unsupported process facilities in Hong Kong.”

As part of its e-Trash Transparency Project, BAN says it “placed 200 tiny GPS-based trailing devices into recent printers and monitors and delivered them to Goodwill [Industries] and to numerous recyclers round the country.”

Two caterpillar-tracked devices went from Total Reclaim’s possession to the New Territories of Hong Kong, where units ar disassembled in non-e-Stewards-certified facilities.

A May 9, 2016, BAN news release on the e-Trash Transparency Project additionally scrutinizes the usage partnership between laptop maker holler INC. and Goodwill Industries. BAN says 46 of the two hundred tracker-planted electronic devices were delivered to Goodwill Industries stores within the us which “seven of those later reported their whereabouts in the Asian countries of Asian country, Taiwan and China (mainland and Hong Kong). Six of these were a part of Dell INC.’s Reconnect partnership with Goodwill.”

Says BAN Executive Director Jim Puckett, “Goodwill and Dell have had robust reputations for social and environmental responsibility. Our findings, however, shake the foundations of that public trust and cry for the implementation of immediate reform when it involves e-waste management.”