Scrap market collapse threatens Bay Area recycler
Alex Handy, a member of a small team stepping up to see what they can do to help, told me that "the business has always been profitable because the recovery of the metals in circuit boards, combined with the California SB-20 bounty on monitors, have always been lucrative. When copper and other scrap metal prices were through the roof two years ago, things were great. We could make enough money off of electronic recycling to fill in the gap left after monitor recycling. But copper, like oil and every other commodity of late, has bottomed out. It's not as scarce as people were anticipating because many factories worldwide aren't ordering more, or as much, thanks to the economic slow-down."
ACCRC has cut-back staff and sold off items in its inventory that still had some value. Still, ACCRC needs to raise money, and there's a Donate button on the ACCRC website. The team is trying to keep the organization afloat and survive long enough for scrap market to recover and put the organization back together. Please help if you can.
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'Emergency re-org'? 'Its own internal problems'? Ummm.... why should I donate money to an organization with such issues, especially since they are implied to be self-inflicted?
How do we know any donations are going to be used effectively, efficiently, and correctly?
Perhaps you would donate money to such an organization because you identify with, or feel obliged to, support the mission of lessening the impact of high-tech waste on our environment in spite of economic shifts.
Everything is supply and demand, Charlie, the consumer demands less goods, manufacturers produce less goods, demanding less raw material input, some of which comes from post-consumer scrap, thus scrap market prices decline.
Businesses work within their business models based on a generalized set of variables, in this case scrap market prices for one. Emergency reorganization is the only way the business can react, and a wise one at that. Well thought out changes in the business model could save the enterprise so that they can continue to provide the valuable service they focus on.
Charitable donation might provide the financial cushion that ACCRC needs in order to survive. So, I ask you: If you live in the Bay Area, would you create greater value through contributing a small donation, or by resigning to the addition your neighbors' obsolete electronics to a landfill, heavy metals, wasted materials and all?
read the article again Charlie.
Somebody needs to create a "Fair Trade" scrap organization...Wait, no they don't.
The drop in scrap metal (and oil, for that matter) is only temporary. Volatility such as this is to be expected, and it is also to be expected that prices will rise again. Fossil fuels and valuable metals will become expensive again, probably right before the prices drop again. Repeat, until society is restructured. Yep!
It should be noted that this is a recognized charitable non profit and not a company fallen on hard times.
I'm not very sympathetic with the whole "the metal market has collapsed" story, but you missed the above piece of important info.
The economy is bad all over because the fed is paying interest on banks' deposits which they've never done before.
its called deflation.
learn more about it here: http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/deflator.html
Meanwhile, back in China: http://boingboing.net/2008/11/09/60-minutes-crew-roug.html
This is not good. I've actually donated boxes of equipment to AARC even though I am in Brooklyn, NY because they do a better job at recycling than most local efforts. I'd rather pay to ship the box of gear than donate to services that I don't trust.
And I think donating to them is a good plan. We need more (much more) folks like this to deal with the trash and junk we're creating nowadays.
I don't want to piss on anyone's non-profit parade here, but there are tons of companies who do this same thing in the bay area who are not going out of business and aren't begging for handouts on boingboing. Electronics recycling does not go hand-in-hand with mismanagement and the tone of this article makes it sound like if these guys go under, electronics will just go in the dump. Not true at all.
I would be willing to support candidates for political office who want to lower taxes for individuals and businesses, and lower any federal regulatory hurdles a business like this might be a victim of. That would help, right?
It is worth noting that many "public service" nonprofit organizations (NGOs) conducting activities in the public interest, as ACCRC does, would be reliant on ongoing government(tax) funding and a major network of individual and corporate donors supporting their ongoing activities.
That ACCRC has taken on the task in entrepreneurial fashion, on its own initiative, successfully for more than a decade, should be noted in any evaluation of its effectiveness and our willingness to help it weather short-term market anomalies: weight/volume/toxicity of toxics diverted from landfill (and from overseas shipping and dismantlement in enormously unhealthy conditions) plus free computers reconditioned/given to neediest people/orgs plus benefit to artists and Burning Man/etc. project developers AND jobs creation (including training and a supportive environment for some who might not otherwise be employed) = millions of dollars in annual public benefit (quintuple bottom line?), which we should not lightly ignore or allow to be disrupted. And don't forget the volunteer-educational aspects, and Linux training/education/outreach.
ACCRC should be admired for its efficient model; it could have operated less efficiently and built up reserves, but instead it has plowed all net proceeds of sales directly back into operations, maximizing social benefit.
I'm writing as a Berkeley resident who does benefit from some small-scale city assistance to ACCRC and as a friend and admirer who has employed ACCRC resources to facilitate projects, as well as a recycling-services user.
So should have mentioned it before, but the U.S. government is subsidizing farmers for what reason exactly? While useful services like this are marginalized for what reason?
Got to get some priorities straight.
I would be willing to support candidates for political office who want to lower taxes for individuals and businesses, and lower any federal regulatory hurdles a business like this might be a victim of. That would help, right?
hurdles? victim?
These people recycle hazardous metals.
Public safety is not a 'hurdle' unless you're trying to make money by cutting corners. You're only a 'victim' of your responsibilities to the community if you don't feel part of it.
So no, I don't think your vote will be helpful until you re-think your place among your fellow men, and your responsibilities to us.
The "free market" strikes again.
In all seriousness though, I've always wondered why waste disposal was not considered a public utility like electricity, gas, and water; it's considered a private market, at least where I'm from. Personally, I feel like it should have government oversight just like all of the other public utilities, but that's just me.
It doesn't help that all of the copper strung around the country is quickly becoming yesterday. Phone companies are selling off their wires.
Recycling our stuff (here, not in Asian front yards) needs to be protected from the 'free market'. It's not an option any more.