I was shocked to discover that each year millions of tons of used gadgets wind up in a bottom draw after only a relatively short time of use.
There’s no escaping that we live in a vibrant consumer economy, and this is no bad thing - those of us who desire today’s most popular gadgets help drive the economy forward.
The problem is that electronics products which still have significant value and usability are finding their way into the bottom draw instead of being returned to the marketplace for resale to someone who is perfectly happy with last years model. After all, it works perfectly well and does the same job.
Instead, a mountain of unused electronics lay idle, eventually becoming too old to be of any use to a potential buyer.
Imagine you bought a new car and left the old one sitting in your garage until it’s value diminished to nothing.
In reality you’d sell it - because the sooner you do the more value you’ll get - this is just as true for gadgets like iPods, cell phones, digital cameras, console games and computers - more and more of these products end up in the bottom draw when they could be sold and re-used before their time is up.
eBay has gone a long way in expanding the second hand market and makes it easier for consumers to sell on their used electronics. But its impact has been relatively small compared to the rising tide of productivity within the electronics industry.
Consumers should be able to sell on their used electronics as readily as they can buy the upgrade - like a car dealership who’ll readily accept your old car in the same transaction. It spares you the hassle of selling it yourself.
So shouldn’t the electronics industry work in the same way?
Well, to some extent it does - GameStop for example, will accept your old gaming console and games as trade ins. However, they give you a faction of the amount you could have gotten on eBay or Craigslist. But not everyone enjoys trawling through the buyers and sellers trying to get a deal - some of us are just too busy - or lazy.
If trading in was made easier, and fairer in terms of the value you received, fewer electronics would end up in a bottom draw. The sad truth is that if you don’t get intrinsic pleasure from the eBay experience and you don’t feel the profit is worth your time and energy, your old gadgets will end up in the bottom draw for some time to come.
I must have - I must have now - the instinctive response when Mummy wheeled your stroller past the Hershey aisle. The same instinct is alive and kicking as thousands line the streets today for the latest in electronics gluttony- the 3G iPhone.(SUPER-SIZE ME!)The iPhone is a phenomenal product - no question - and would have remained a phenomenal product unchanged for another few years - but now it’s just another piece of junk pushed aside for a spanking new upgrade - the 3G iPhone.Let’s face it - features like GPS and 3G could have been included in iPhone 1.0 but were held back to (1) Create further record sales for a later model and (2) ensure that the original iPhone would be perceived to be obsolete as quickly as possible.It’s a prime example of the marketing employed by companies like Apple who have deliberately instigated the e-waste crisis. I call it deliberate because Apple and the other electronics giants are fully aware that greater amounts of e-waste is a direct result of their drive to make previous models obsolete as quickly as they can.How different is the new iPhone 3G from the iPhone 1.0? Surprisingly, not very much. Apart from having 3G and GPS.What else is new?
- Your inbox will be the same and act just as fast and soon you’ll be able to download software to make your iPhone 1.0 email faster and more secure.
- Your old iPhone supports ActiveSync just like the new one.
- Your old iPhone supports all the new enterprise functionality of the Blackberry.
- Plus you’re old iPhone (it’s just crazy to call this thing old) is going to be able to capitalize on all the new applications pouring out thanks to the long awaited SDK release (Software Development Kit).
- 3G streaming video will be faster, but none of the stuff I love to watch on YouTube will be there because of copyright protection - and of course in a Wifi area you’ll have no advantage over iPhone 1.0.
Oh yes- the old iPhone is about 2 mil thinner, so the 3G will feel a little bulkier in your pocket.I find 3G still sluggish compared to the broadband speed I’m used to in most Wifi Cafes… for a good all round review go to engadget. A better alternativeMy advice is to stay with your original iPhone - if you really have to have the 3G model because you totally rely on the Edge for internet connectivity and not Wifi then at least wait 2 or 3 weeks until some mint pre-owned 3Gs are on the market.Then just sell your old iPhone and upgrade. This way you won’t be adding another new cell phone onto the market. Every time you buy a new cell phone you’re adding another onto the e-waste pile - and only 12.5% of that will be recycled.Later in the year we’re going to start trade 2 save. We’ll happily accept the iPhone 1.0 in graded conditions and sell pre-owned 2.0 and 1.0 iPhones in graded conditions, from like new, very good and good (all with a 1 year warranty). By trading in this way you’ll be able to upgrade without breaking the bank and without creating more e-waste.What’s more, trade 2 save will be a pre-owned electronics market place, where you can trade-in all your used electronics in working condition including all electronics, accessories, computer hardware, laptops, PCs, Gaming, Movies and entertainment.
I was interested to read some blatant misinformation in a recent article from Earth911 that 99% of all e-waste is recycled.
Because according to the US EPA only 12.5% of disposed e-waste is recycled (Municipal Solid Waste In the United States, 2005 Facts and Figures, October 2006). And for good reason - 87.5% of it is non-recyclable!
Only 12.5% of the consumer electronic products bought were “recovered” in 2005. This compares with an average recovery rate of 32.1% for all other categories
Important Fact about E-Waste and Recycling that the green coalition of electronics manufacturers don’t want you to read.
These are quantifiable statistics concerning the issues of electronic waste and the ongoing e-waste recycling methods currently deployed. All facts and figures are backed by source and where possible I have made a link to the original data. These facts and figures were originally compiled for both legislators as well as advocates of environmental policy studies. Since its compelation in 2006, the statistics have been updated where possible. This list will be updated as new statistics are released.
Research includes Facts and figures from the Electronics TakeBack Coalition (2006) last updated in June 2008
What is the latest estimates of E-waste expansion globally?
The estimated amount of extra e-waste created each year is 400 million units
At the current growth rates 3-4 billion units will be scrapped from now until 2010. This equated to an average of 400 million units plus a year. (International Association of Electronics Recyclers 2006)
More than 130,000 computers are trashed EACH DAY in the USA
Today, this estimate is more like 250,000. This previous estimate was drawn up by Gartner in 2003.
In their Electronics Recovery Recycling Baseline Report in 1999, the National Safety Council predicted that there could be up to 500 million obsolete computers in the US by 2005. This estimate has been confimred by Gartners findings in 2005.
More than 20 million computers and televisions are added to home storage each year.
This means that a huge amount of e-waste is out there but currently being stored in people’s homes.
According to the EPA about 57 million PCs and TVs are bought by households and businesses each year in the United States. These don’t necessarily replace the older versions of the same electronic. This is particularly true with products such as Cellphones which notoriously stay in a bottom draw for some years. Consumers (both business and household) frequently store their retired products.
Experts agree that the average home will be hoarding three or more units somewhere in their home. However, this figure is much bigger with businesses holding older computers. Up to 24 million TVs and PCs are added to their storage each year. This storing or hoarding is predicted to accelerate thanks to new Plasma and LCD TVs. New digital broadcasting are likely to negate any resale value old TVs might have.
Cell phones
Over 130 million mobile phones or cell phones are trashes each year (USA)
This equates to more than 2.5 million tons of e-waste (2005)
And contrary to figures published by the industry, nearly 90% of this waste in irreclaimable.
2.6 million tons of e-waste was generated in 2005, and the EPA notes that only 12.6% was recycled:
As in recent previous updates of this report, generation of selected consumer electronic products was estimated as a subset of miscellaneous durable goods. In 2005, an estimated 2.6 million tons of these goods were generated. Of this, approximately 330,000 tons of selected consumer electronics were recovered for recycling. Selected consumer electronics include products such as TVs, VCRs, DVD players, video cameras, stereo systems, telephones, and computer equipment.“
Each year up to 50 million tons of e-waste get dumped
Some 20 to 50 million metric tonnes of e-waste are generated worldwide every year, comprising more than 5% of all municipal solid waste. When the millions of computers purchased around the world every year (183 million in 2004) become obsolete they leave behind lead, cadmium, mercury and other hazardous wastes. In the US alone, some 14 to 20 million PCs are thrown out every year. In the EU the volume of e-waste is expected to increase by 3 to 5 per cent a year. Developing countries are expected to triple their output of e-waste by 2010.
E-waste is the fastest rising waste stream in the US
The amount of consumer electronic actually rose by 8% from 2004 to 2005 to 2.63 million tons, a higher rate than any other category of waste. This is at a time when all other sources of waste are falling.
Location and Numbers of Old Electronics
How Much Electronic Waste Gets Recycled or Stockpiled?
Only 12.5% of disposed e-waste is recycled
Only 12.5% of the consumer electronic products bought were “recovered” in 2005. This compares with an average recovery rate of 32.1% for all other categories
68% of consumers stockpile
“68 percent of American stockpile their old computer equipment at home.”
9% of all products sold between 1980 and 2004 are still in storage
Source: EPA “Electronics Waste Management in the US: Preliminary Findings. Presentation by Clare Lindsay, U.S. EPA, Office of Solid Waste to the E-Scrap Conference in Austin, TX, October 18, 2006. These are preliminary numbers (still under review) to be presented in a final report by the EPA in 2007.
Of all products sold between 1980-2004, almost half are still in use either by the first or subsequent owners.
• About 42 percent have already been managed via recycling or disposal.
• 9 percent are being stores or hoarded
• Half of these are TVs
• A quarter of these are PCs
• A little over 20% percent were re-used by a second owner.
Sales of Electronics
a. Sales in Computing
In 2007 worldwide computer sales reached 260 million. Over 67 million were bought in the US.
267.7 million computers were sold globally in 2007, up 32 million from 2006 (IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker). 67 million of these were sold in the USA. These include Desktops, Notebooks, Laptops, Ultra Portables or Mobile Computers and x86 Servers. This oes not include hand helds such as PDAs.
An estimated 430 million computers will be sold in 2012
This year, in 2008, it is estimated by industry analysts that over 300 million computers will be bought, with over 70 million going to the US. This will increase to 430 million by 2012,(85 million in the US)
b. Sales of TVs
This year we bought 3.9 MILLION TVs for the SUPERBOWL alone!
National Retail Federation says we’ll be purchasing 4 million TVs just for this year’s 2008 SUPERBOWL. That’s up more than 50% from last year. In 2006 in the same period we bought 1.7 million.
In 2008 32 million digital TVs wil be sold in the US
As of December 2007 over 50% of US households now own a digital television. (The Consumer Electronics Association)
In 2007 $25 manufacturers made BILLION on digital TVs in the US.
According to new CEA sales projections, manufacturers are expected to announce an average of 11 percent revenue growth in excess of $25 billion in 2007 from digital TV sales. Additional rises of 13 percent revenue and 17 percent unit sales increase is estimated for 2008 (CEA).
Global TV sales in excess of 50 million a year
TV sales reached 50.6 million units per year (Q4 2006 to Q3 2007). TV revenues were over $26 billion for that period.
83% of 50”+ screens are sold to the US
c. Sales of cell phone or mobiles
Globally over one billion cell phones were sold in 2006
A new milestone was reached in 2006, with over one billion cellphones shipped and sold that year. (IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker). That’s a 22.5% rise from 2005
By 2008, cell phone usage is expected to reach two billion (UN).
In the US the amount of cell phone subscribers increased from 340,000 in 1985 to 180 million in 2004. Globally, cell phone sales have increased from 100 million units in 1997 to 780 million units in 2005.
Cell phone sales are projected to exceed 1 billion units per year in 2009, with an estimated 2.6 billion cell phones in use by the end of that year (USGS).
We purchased more than $160 BILLION consumer electronics in 2005
“15 percent of this spend was made online (CE) a jump of 5% from 2004, according to a study released today by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)®. “
Global consumer electronics sales was $618 BILLION in 2005
What is recoverable from recycling consumer electronics?
Gold:
One ton of e-waste from PCs has more gold in it than 17 t of gold ore.
Resources Used in Electronics Manufacturing
It takes 530 pounds of fossil fuels, 48 pounds of chemicals and 1.5 tons of water to produce 1 single PC with its monitor
The UN study found that making a PC and monitor uses 240 kg (530 pounds) of fossil fuel, 22 kg (48 pounds) of chemicals and 1.5 tonnes of water. This is more than the weight of a rhinoceros or a car (Kuehr and Williams, 2003). Making consumer electronics is an extreme burden not only on the environment but also on the demand for fossil fuels. This far exceeds any other household or business product.
Does reusing and re-selling pre-owned computers create more jobs than disposal?
WALL-E is one of the better animations to come out of the Disney Pixar creative collaboration.
It’s a heart warming tale of WALL-E, a Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth Class unit. The lovable robot manages to stay functional after 700 years of service by recycling bits of other WALL-E robots which have perished over the centuries of cleaning up the Earth.
A thousand years earlier in the 21st Century, the Buy ‘N’ Large corporation had (miraculously) taken over every single service on Earth, including the government. They are to blame for the rampant over production and subsequent pollution that ensues - turning Earth into a wasteland of e-waste and junk - void of humans, who generations later, remain living lethargically on a space cruiser many light years away.
The Buy ‘N’ Large corporation is a more acceptable bad guy to portray than the dozens of consumer brands who benefit from today’s throw away society.
A more realistic landscape (the one we see today in Asia) would be the mountains of e-waste filled with broken Sony plasma screens, Panasonic DVD players and colored iPod shells. This later imagery would never have gotten passed Disney’s largest stock holder.
The real message to be taken from this summer’s No. 1 blockbuster is that most of what makes up e-waste today is non recyclable and has absolutely nowhere to go.
only about 12% of the e-waste we produce is recycled. The rest will joint the mountains of e-waste which one day might challenge the Himalayas.
We see the pictures of Chinese villagers picking their way through circuit boards and recovering the poisonous alloys and by-product, but this only makes up about 12% of the junk that we ship to them. The rest stays strewn across the countryside on e-waste dumps which closely resemble the make believe ones depicted in WALL-E.
If the electronics we produce today are largely non recyclable, why is the drive towards recycling them so prevalent, when a drive to re-use them or make them last longer goes relatively unheard?
So long as the green back is more powerful than the green lobby, more funds will be driven towards green perception than green reality - The burying of the National Computer Recycling Act is testament to this. Only when every bit of electronics is recyclable (and this includes Xbox, Playstation, Wii too) will we be able to start slowing the acceleration of e-waste dumping.
Until the Utopian vision of green electronics magically appears - which will be decades away at best - consumers need to look at other ways to lower the rising tide of e-waste: Buy a pre-owned or used computer, digital camera, cell phone or any electronics device when you can.
When you buy something new you add to the e-waste pile - when you buy used you don’t.
Sell pre-owned or used as well. If you don’t use your old computer, DVD player, cell phone, digital camera or camcorder any more, trade it in or sell it pre-owned or used so that someone else will buy it from you instead of buying it new and adding to e-waste themselves.
For additional trust, buy used off of a pre-owned retailer who is willing to give a one year warranty on your purchase. That way, you have as much confidence as buying new.
With companies like trade 2 save launching to give consumers more confidence in the pre-owned and used consumer electronics market, we hope that more consumers will take matters into their own hands and prevent the e-waste catastrophe so beautifully animated in WALL-E.
For those of us who don’t enjoy the eBay experience and just want to trade-in our old laptops for an upgrade, Sony Style has the answer. You can trade in your old laptop or desktop using their online calculator to get credit towards any new purchase at Sony Style.
The trade and save format is proving very successful at Sony and fits in perfectly with their environmental program.
Sony are keen to voice their environmental credentials…
Sony does not want anything to go to waste which could potentially harm the environment if improperly disposed. At the same time, Sony wants to make recycling beneficial and convenient for you. That’s why we offer the Sony Notebook Trade-in Program. We’ll not only dispose of your notebook in an environmentally safe manner, we’ll also give you credit towards a new VAIO PC.
So we took them at their word. I have an old Pentium 3 Dell Laptop so was keen to learn how much trade-in value they’d give me for the laptop they were going to responsibly dispose of for me.
Strangely I got this response:
We are sorry but your notebook is ineligible for trade-in
But I thought that…
Sony does not want anything to go to waste which could potentially harm the environment” and that you “not only dispose of (my) notebook in an environmentally safe manner, (you’ll) also give (me) credit towards a new VAIO PC.
Oh well. I suppose my old laptop is just too old to be recycled.
But hang on, I’ve also got this mint condition used once IBM Core 2 Duo with 2 GHz, 200 Gig Hard Drive, Blue tooth, DVD +-
Ah… Sony’s Value Calculator is much more interested in disposing of this terrible piece of unwanted e-waste. In fact, they’ll even give me a whopping $413 trade-in credit for it!!
That’s amazing! Because according to eBay, I should be getting $1650 for it used! Thank you Sony - We’re really happy you’re heart is in the right place when it comes to the environment.
I wonder if some of the laptops on eBay are actually from Sony Style? What a business! 400% mark up for what they buy them for from Joe public. They only make 15% mark up on new stuff. They should go into the trade-in business. Oh yes - they have.
Of course, Sony’s trade and save venture will soon be having a little unwanted competition in the form of trade 2 save, where people will be able to trade-in their used laptops and other consumer electronics for decent prices. They’ll be able to buy and sell in the same online store or trade for an upgrade. Trade 2 save will only buy, sell or trade used or pre-owned products in graded conditions, including computer hardware, consumer electronics, cell phones, gaming and movies. Because trading pre-owned consumer electronics and their consumables is a sure fire way of tackling e-waste.
I find it amazing that a company like Sony can so proudly brag about their trade in / re-cycling program on the one hand, and yet refuse to take anything in that they can’t sell on eBay for 4 times the price!
The counterfeit game is stepping up and gone are the days when you could shrewdly spot the PlayStation logo spelled PloyStation. The real scams are the ones which are out to defraud you – and that means counterfeits looking exactly like the real thing, down to the hologram certificate on the packaging.
If it looks too good to be true, it probably is, but then again, scammers are getting round this too with a ‘close to market price’ for their counterfeit goods on eBay. Plus there’s plenty of opportunities to hack eBay accounts and assume the identity of reputable dealers.
Perhaps the best advice is Know your source. Avoid online merchants who you don’t know, a website with spelling mistakes on their homepage is an instant giveaway – reputable dealers can afford a proof reader and Chinese tricksters are notoriously bad spellers. A whopping 87% of all fake IT originate from China.
This makes it harder for consumers to trust the pre-owned used market in particular. Trade 2 save, where customers will be able to buy sell and trade consumer electronics gaming products and cellphones is helping to combat this by stringently testing every product they buy off of the public. Testers are especially trained in spotting counterfeits, from checking screw fittings, hardware analysis, to micro components. A whole array of counterfeits are flooding the market from China, especially so for mobile or cell phones, DVD or blu-ray movies, PC Hardware in particular - it’s a growing and worrying trend that is also attacking the very best outlets who don’t test each and every product.
China remains counterfeit central — more fake products of all kinds come from China than from the rest of the world combined.
The growing counterfeiting problem is the dark side of the incredible cheapness of PCs these days. The driving force is consumers and businesses who view PCs as commodities to be purchased based on price, rather than quality and reliability. Declining margins force OEMs to seek ever cheaper suppliers, which in turn seek out less expensive components. Often, the cheapest part is the fakest part.
One in ten IT products sold is fake. (AGMA)
It’s possible to buy a fully counterfeit PC and think it’s original equipment. The Alliance for Gray Market and Counterfeit Abatement (AGMA) says one in ten IT products sold is fake. But even a computer sold legitimately by a brand-name outfit might have a counterfeit motherboard. And even if the motherboard is real, various chips and parts on that board might be fake.
No company – (not even the Best Buys or Walmarts) — can track down and verify the authenticity of every component.
Testing is both extremely expensive and very time consuming.
Any company that tests products before passing them on is in a good position to spot a larger percentage of fakes, however a typical PC contains thousands of counterfeitable parts.
Up to date photographs of known conterfeits, procedures for spotting them, along with hardware analysis, chipset removal and testing all help to ensure that even the most realistic fakes won’t get through the screening process.
Organizations with strict testing procedures are unlikely to be a primary target of the fraudsters, who prefer to bask in relative anonymity of auction sites like eBay.
A massive crackdown at U.S. and European airports in December 2007 yielded some 360,000 fake electronic components worth $1.3 billion, including phony Intel chips and about 40 other major brands.
Such high-visibility busts however, mask the difficulty in stopping counterfeit components.
The ugly truth is that you can never be 100% certain that any PC you buy contains all legitimate components. But you can minimize the risk by shopping for reliability, not just low price.
Some of the poorest communities in developing countries are swamped by e-waste from the west. This is old news. But so too is legislation to abolish this growing trade.
Back in 2005, members of Congress formed an “e-waste working group,” hoping to jump-start a federal recycling system to curb the e-waste traffickers. The head of that group, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), proposed the National Computer Recycling Act.
It was designed to establish a grant and fee program through the Environmental Protection Agency to encourage and promote the recycling of used computers and to promote the development of a national infrastructure for the recycling of used computers, and for other purposes.
To help fund the national recycling program a fee would be taken from the retail sales of certain electronics.
Good news for the environmentalists, but not so for the consumer electronics giants who would foot the ‘recycling tax’.
The act soon ran into ‘implementation issues’, and three years later is still under review (along with the Palmer’s Act of 1864 which requires Amish to dress more fashionably).
Individual States have tried to follow European Legislation
Thirteen states including California, Washington, Maine, and Minnesota have agreed in principal to e-waste laws and support among other states is growing, in addition to new research initiatives.
In September 2007, the Green Chemistry Research and Development Act was proposed, looking to authorize $165 million over three years for research into products that reduce or eliminate hazardous waste. Sadly, however, the bill still awaiting a Senate vote, while lobbyists bide their time picking at its seams.
The Europeans got there in the end
Considering the sheer bureaucratic complexities of the European Union, after many delays, they did manage to set in stone the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulations governing the safe disposal of IT equipment. The new legislation went into effect July 1st, 2007.
Under the new law, electrical and electronic producers, rebranders and importers must pay for the responsible disposal and recycling of their goods. (It’s a bit like getting wriggly’s to chisel all their chewing gum off of pavements).
The first of its kind, but certainly not the last, the WEEE directive is setting the stage for future legislation.
With the high cost of disposing e-waste safely, it’s hardly surprising that the problem is still growing at an alarming rate - lower environmental standards and working conditions in China, India, Kenya and elsewhere have led to an exponential influx of e-waste, often entering through lucrative illegal channels.
The majority of e-waste ends up being broken down by ill-equipped laborers working under hazardous conditions.
A typical router or switch may contain more than 2 percent lead by weight and up to 38 separate chemical elements.
The Simplest solutions are often the most easily overlooked
In an effort to combat e-waste, reuse has become a new priority in the consumer market. Organizations including Apple, Dell, HP, and Sony are already instigating change by establishing trade-in and recycling programs ahead of legislation. With the shortening of product life cycles, consumers can also buy, sell or trade used consumer electronics and computers at trading portals. By doing this, a product’s lifespan can be increased by up to 4 times, significantly lowering the amount of ewaste heading for China.
Gartner estimates the energy from manufacturing, distribution and use of information and communications technology emits approximately 2 percent of total global carbon dioxide, equal to the emissions from the entire airline industry.
Gartner analyst Simon Mingay estimates that one in every dozen computers used worldwide is a “secondary computer,” and nearly 152.5 million used systems are shipped annually. The research firm predicts that both the home and professional markets for secondary PC’s will continue to see growth in the next several years, fueled by better performance, longer system life and recycling legislation that would give companies greater incentives for reuse and recycling.
Buying pre-owned hardware is not only a cost effective way to reduce IT costs, it is also perfectly aligned with e-waste reduction.
Organizations of all kinds can benefit from reuse, in ways that tangibly affect the bottom line and intangibly help save the environment.
In order for this to happen, more pressure needs to be implemented to enforce the kind of environment which would make widespread reuse both attractive and feasible.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act was originally passed in 1970 to illiminate the ill effects brought about by organized crime.
Since the 1980’s, however, civil lawyers have taken advantage of section 1964(c) of the RICO Act, which allows civil claims to be brought by any person injured in their business or property by reason of a RICO violation.
Is eBay, by making so much of its income by selling known counterfeit and/or stolen goods, in fact a criminal conspiracy under the terms of the RICO act?
Scott Augenbaum, supervisory special agent for the FBI Cybercrime Fraud unit in Washington, D.C. is adament on the subject “The vast majority (of conterfeit IT products in circulation) is still being purchased from gray market, uncertified resellers that unload their goods on eBay at extremely low prices,”
Counterfeit products account for nearly 10% of the overall IT products market.
Counterfeit Cisco equipment, known in the industry as “Chisco” (counterfeit Cisco equipment originating in China) are being created at an alarming rate. According to a white paper by AGMA and consulting company KPMG, counterfeit products account for nearly 10% of the overall IT products market. That’s $100 billion in fake memory sticks, drives, monitors, networking gear and other IT products in circulation.
China’s policies concerning intellectual property infringement and state-sanctioned piracy have become a growing global concern. Tremendous growth of the network hardware secondary market, as well as an upturn in Chinese manufacturing have combined to push these fears to new heights. The ease at which counterfeits can be sold on eBay may be helping to encourage growth in a market that eBay is certainly making money from. A question which must be asked is how much of these profits are being redirected to help fight this growing internet phenomenon?
As a result, network managers are often avoiding pre-owned hardware from eBay simply because it is too difficult to identify counterfeit equipment. Unless products can be checked by a third party, counterfeit fraud on eBay will continue. An alternative for network managers wanting to save money and have the confidence to buy used or pre-nwed is to buy off of trading portal where products are checked and tested by professionals who can attest to them being genuine. At trade 2 save, consumers will be able to buy sell or trade their computers, cameras, cell phones, games and movies. When they sell them to trade 2 save, every product they buy is tested and give a one year warranty before being sold on. Spotting counterfeits at trade 2 save will be a top priority in procedure and training.
One of the worst offenders on the eBay site, the computer software category is unfortunately littered with counterfeit and pirated goods. Electronic entertainment media of all kinds is commonly sold illegally on eBay, whether in the form of pirated/unlicensed copies, or in the form of import or export-restricted goods.
In Wisconsin 6 defendants were sentenced in April for selling a combined total of more than $25,000,000 worth of counterfeit computer software on eBay.
eBay may well have profited substantially from these transactions and we have not been able to ascertain whether or not eBay has returned these fund to either law enforcement agencies or the many thousands of eBay buyers who were defrauded in good faith.
It’s what we’re being told to do by every consumer electronics institution on the block, from Best Buy to Apple. But what actually happens to that monitor or PC once we drop it off and slip back into our Prius’s, tutting smugly at passing Hummers?
Well don’t feel so green greenies, because although your PC will no longer end up in a landfill somewhere in Alabama, it WILL be sold by the tonnage (for a healthy profit I might add) to the highest bidding e-waste merchant, who’ll then pile it high on a gas guzzling tanker to be shipped off to Hong Kong. From there it will be resold to another trader until it eventually ends up on the swelling e-waste dumps of China.
Yes - these pictures are real, and these children do die of lead and mercury poisoning as they blow-torch or hack their way through millions of circuit boards.
Still - there are plenty of children where she came from when she reaches a life expectancy of 15 - and plenty of throw-away PCs, laptops, monitors, MP3 players, speakers, headphones, cellphones etc to grow the never ending mountain of e-waste being created to the rapturous sound of iTunes.
I make no secret of my suspicion of recycling programs and the greener than green recycling stores, many of whom actually charge to recycle your e-waste, only to make a clean (or dirty) profit as they shift it along the dirt never ending conveyor belt to China.
Is there an alternative? For an eight year old PC maybe not - none of the internals are up to date, but the real crime is that most of the stuff ending up on e-waste dumps today are between 2 and 3 years old.
The bottom line is that most people today upgrade after about a year or so and leave their old laptop or cellphone lying around in a bottom draw until it’s no longer any good to anyone - before driving down to that (ever so lovely) environmental store with green tea and rose who’ll take it off your hands for $15 - you’ll get back into your Prius, tut at a Hummer and - well I think we’ve been here several million consumers before - Oh what a gravy train - an industry booming at both ends!
If people sold their one or two year old digital cameras, PCs, laptops, cellphones as pre-owned, and if possible, upgraded to another pre-owned but up to date model, then the e-waste merchants would suddenly find their business cut by 75% within a couple of years. The buy, sell or trade pre-owned model as advocated by new trading portal trade 2 save needs to feature strongly in the minds of Americans if the problem of ewaste is to be tackled in the short to medium term.
The downside to this, of course, is that the profits of Sony, Apple, Samsung and Acer among others would suffer from fewer sales. But then, is this such a terrible thing? We love the things they give us, but at some point we have to conclude that it may be too much of a good thing.
Upgrading to stay ahead with technology is becoming more and more important. It’s about time that as Americans we started to do it responsibly - oh and guess what - you’ll say a fist full of dollars too!
