Two former top executives of Total Reclaim, billed as the Northwest’s largest e-waste recycler, were sentenced Tuesday to 28 months for wire-fraud conspiracy in connection with the illegal export of 8.3 million pounds of junked LCD TVs to Hong Kong between 2008 and 2015, said the U.S. Attorney’s office in Seattle. Craig Lorch, 61, and Jeff Zirkle, 55, earned millions by promising to recycle the e-waste responsibly, but secretly shipped it overseas where it was destroyed in an “environmentally unsafe” manner, it said. “Motivated by greed, these defendants betrayed every pledge they made to be good environmental stewards,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Tessa Gorman. The green group Basel Action Network tipped off authorities to the scheme after electronically tracking the e-waste to Hong Kong, said the office. After BAN confronted Lorch and Zirkle with its findings, they tried to “cover up their fraud by altering hundreds of shipping records,” it alleged. Attempts to reach the defendants’ lawyers were unsuccessful. BAN Director Jim Puckett has "no doubt that 7 years of shipping hundreds of container loads of mercury laden LCD screens to Hong Kong caused serious damage to the health and livelihood of the workers employed there," he emailed us Wednesday. "I have seen these smashing operations and they provide no protections from breathing this very toxic metal. Those victims will sadly never see justice for the harm done to them.” The group was able to uncover Total Reclaim's crimes using GPS-based geolocation devices it developed with the help of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to track e-waste container waste movement inside the U.S. and as the containers leave U.S. ports, said a 2016 BAN report.

Earth Day is “a great time to consider e-cycling or donating” old electronics, blogged FTC Consumer Education Specialist Colleen Tressler in a “consumer alert” Monday. “Dumping them in the trash is a bad idea” because most electronics “contain hazardous materials that shouldn't go into landfills,” she said. Many consumer tech companies have e-waste takeback programs and drop-off centers, she said. Many charities accept donations of “slightly outdated but still-functioning” computers, she said: “Before you recycle or donate your old electronics, remember to delete any personal information you stored on the device.”

Staples is marking Earth Day Monday with a weeklong promotion that debuts Sunday offering Rewards members $10 off a $30 or more purchase when they bring discarded electronics into the store for recycling. Staples said it will accept PCs and printers, tablets and mobile devices, plus other electronics, including DVD and Blu-ray players and stereo receivers, but not TVs and other large electronics. It will enforce a limit of seven recycled items per customer per day, it said. Staples is an e-Stewards Enterprise, an e-waste program started and sanctioned by the Basel Action Network on responsible recycling, said the retailer. ERI Direct, a certified e-Stewards recycler, “is our primary recycling partner for electronics and therefore must be audited against stringent standards and disclose their downstream processing partners to ensure that they are using responsible e-waste recycling practices and not exporting or otherwise improperly handling electronic materials,” it said. E-waste that Staples collects from customers will be “backhauled” to warehouses and shipped to ERI Direct for processing, it said.

Electronic waste recycler ERI and the Broadway Green Alliance plan a free e-waste collection in New York's Times Square in the three hours before theater matinees begin Wednesday, they said. The semi-annual drive runs 11 a.m.-2 p.m., and consumers are encouraged to bring cellphones, copy machines, desktop and laptop computers, DVD players, fax machines, monitors, printers, storage media, stereo equipment, computer peripherals and cables. Unwanted iPods will be donated to the Broadway Alzheimer’s Project, they said. ERI will recycle the e-waste collected at the event, destroying all data, and recycle or refurbish all items in an environmentally responsible manner, it said.

Samsung joined the Basel Action Network’s EarthEye e-waste GPS-tracking service, said the company Tuesday. BAN launched EarthEye in June with hopes of thwarting unauthorized exports of discarded electronics (see 1806210002).

The global e-waste management market is expected to reach 63.7 million metric tons generated by 2025, said a Tuesday Grand View Research report. Driving the market are rising disposable income in developing countries and high-volume sales of electronic devices worldwide, it said. High costs of e-waste recycling are expected to limit market growth somewhat, but rising awareness about the hazardous effects of e-waste on human health and strict regulations on the generation and treatment of e-waste in most countries are expected to offset challenges over the forecast period. The global e-waste management market recorded 44.7 million metric tons in 2016, it said.

The Basel Action Network urged South and Southeast Asian nations to ratify the Basel Ban Amendment, an international agreement that would amend the existing Basel Convention, agreed to by 194 countries, to make it illegal to export hazardous wastes, including e-waste, from developed countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and EU to developing countries. BAN warned the nations they could be next, after Thailand, to be hit by a “tidal wave” of electronic and plastic wastes. The warning follows China’s decision to block imports of waste beginning this year with the advent of the "National Sword" policy. In the past month, Thailand has seen rural lands "overrun" with possibly “hundreds of illegal and highly polluting electronic waste processing yards that risk contamination of the food and water supply in the country,” said BAN. Meanwhile, the U.S., Canada and European countries continue to produce “the same volumes of waste and have shown little willingness, nor, at times, the infrastructure to deal with it at home rather than find new destinations for it,” BAN said Tuesday. Based on its GPS tracking, BAN said 40 percent of e-waste given to recyclers was exported, mostly to Asia, with tracked devices arriving in Hong Kong, and increasingly to Thailand and to Pakistan. In the region, Brunei, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka have ratified the agreement, but Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam haven't, it said, noting the amendment is three ratifications short of becoming international law.

The Basel Action Network officially debuted its EarthEye e-waste GPS-tracking service Thursday, saying it hopes the program will help thwart “unauthorized exports” of discarded electronics “to substandard recycling operations in developing countries.” BAN soft-launched the EarthEye program Tuesday with Dell (see 1806190002). BAN’s studies have found 40 percent of discarded devices given to U.S. contractors for responsible recycling instead were sent to developing countries, said the green group: “The evidence is compelling that far too many companies are unaware of the risks involved with improper management of electronic waste.”

Basel Action Network is teaming with Dell Technologies to use GPS trackers to verify where Dell e-waste goes after it’s collected through the company’s U.S. consumer takeback programs, said the green group Tuesday. The pilot project with Dell is the start of BAN’s EarthEye commercial tracking services launching officially on Thursday to “all major corporations and institutions,” it said. Dell plans to send 40 hidden trackers into its U.S. takeback logistics chain to “see if things end up where they are supposed to -- in accordance with the law and Dell's strict no-export of e-waste policy,” said BAN.

T-Mobile said Monday it will move to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2021. It joined the RE100 coalition of companies committed to using only renewable power. T-Mobile said it finalized a contract for 160 megawatts of power from Infinity Renewables’ Solomon Forks Wind Project in Kansas, to be operational in early 2019. “To reach 100 percent, T-Mobile will buy enough wind power annually to account for every unit of electricity the company consumes,” the carrier said. It's "focused on creating new energy from renewable sources, buying only from projects that wouldn’t exist without T-Mobile’s involvement.”