World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association

The WR3A or World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association is a business consortium dedicated to reform of the trade of used electronics, or ewaste, exports. The WR3A is patterned after Fair Trade organizations, such as Fair Trade CoFFEE, which leverage the value of trade to create concessions for social or environmental value.

WR3A was established in 2004 following a visit by USA electronics recycler (American Retroworks Inc.), University of California Davis recycling program, and a Seattle recycler (with a zero-export policy) to China's SKD (semi knock down) factories. Those factories purchased USA computer monitors which still have functional CRT (cathode ray tubes). The CRTs are knocked down to the bare CRT, which is inserted into a new TV or monitor case, complete with new tuner board, etc. WR3A founders observed that the "junk" or ewaste CRTs imported into China's Guiyu province were leftovers of functional CRTs purchased by the SKD factories. The value of the working [CRTs was approximately $10 USA] , and the value of mixed monitors imported into Guiyu was only $4, which allowed loads of 1/3 bad monitors to be imported as waste. The bad 1/3 were taken apart for copper value and the CRT glass was evidently discarded. While the Chinese government, which invested and owns new CRT manufacturing factories, shut many of these operations down as "grey 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 1

The Chinese government, which took over most of the new (virgin) CRT manufacturing capacity worldwide in the 1990s, opposed the import of used CRTs. Many of the SKD 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 Viet Nam, trucking the CRTs overland to Chinese factories. The USA has its own SKD factory, Video Display Corp of Tucker, Georgia 2.

WR3A was contracted as a consultant to the US EPA for its July 2008 publication "Electronic Waste Management in the United States" [www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/ecycling/docs/app-1.pdf]

WR3A presented statistics and film in January, 2009, featured at the Keynote Address of the CES 2009 in Las Vegas. The statistics demonstrate 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. WR3A also presented film of the reuse and refurbishing operations which demonstrate proper recycling practices and best available practices in these ten countries.

The organization is pursuing 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." Founders compare current efforts to ban export of modern, repairable, but used equipment to the "coffee boycott" of the mid 1980s, which sought to improve the well being of coffee farmers by boycotting large USA coffee marketers. Fair Trade Coffee - which increased purchases of coffee from plantations which treated workers better - was soon embraced as a better model.

National Public Radio's program Living On Earth profiled one of WR3A's members - a women's coop doing TV repair and recycling in Mexico, in May 2009.#REDIRECT www.loe.org