Security Shredding News Summer 2020 by Downing and Associates

Volume 17, Issue 2

summer 2020

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Masks for Protection Against CoviD-19 ... The Great Deception! By Kathleen Marquardt

ue to an overwhelming amount of media and political outcry regarding face masks and the contradicting evidence over whether they are necessary or not, many business owners and workers are confused. In fact, many are wondering why there are so few – just two to be exact – experts from whom we are being given almost all of our information. And many wonder why these so called experts are all over the board on this issue. Long before anyone ever heard of COVID-19, scientists had investigated the efficacy of mask-wearing for protection against influenza and other respiratory viruses. Studies involving face masks have been done in homes, elementary schools, hospitals, and at large public universities, throughout the world. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, use of the N95 mask, or any other filtration mask, was primarily limited to industries like mining, construction, and coatings, as well as hospital surgical areas. Before COVID-19, only those diagnosed with an infectious disease were encouraged to wear face masks. In fact, the CDC previously did not recommend wearing a face mask unless a person was known to be infected. So why did this virus outbreak cause the World Health Organization (WHO) and Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to move away from the guideline of ‘non-infected need not wear a mask’, to everyone needs to wear a mask and stay 6’ away from others? At first, the only recommendations on wearing face masks (to protect the public from COVID-19), came from the WHO and CDC, from Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx. But even they flip-flopped on whether or not we should be wearing masks. Consequently, it has taken other (self- thinking) doctors and infection control experts to ask critical questions about mask-wearing: What are the risks? What are the benefits? Are the benefits greater than the risks? If the benefits are not greater than the risks, why promote them?

N95 MASK

n the case of the highly touted N95 mask, there has evolved a great deal of controversy. According to a NIH, National Library of Medicine, (NIH/NLM) study, “Wearing N95 masks results in hypoxygenemia and hypercapnia, which reduce human work efficiency and the ability to make correct decisions.” The researchers found that the N95 mask reduced blood oxygen levels significantly; and the longer the wearer used the mask, the greater the fall in blood oxygen levels. Also, according to a study on Medcrave (an online publishing library), there is an increase in nasal airflow resistance upon removal of N95 respirator. This is potentially due to physiological changes of the nasal airways According to the study, “The nasal resistance was not recovered even after 1.5 hours removal of the respirator/face mask”. Dr. Russell Blaylock, who was a clinical assistant professor of neurosurgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, goes further than other experts. He contends that the combined science regarding face masks indicates that anything less than an N95 mask, used continually, would not help at all. Quoting a McIntyre study, he pointed out that, if everyone wore masks and followed all suggested procedures, as thoroughly as possible, it still would not reduce the spread of influenza germs. According to a 1991 article on the use of surgical masks, by Drs. Daley and Norman,

“Prolonged wearing of a surgical face mask causes loss of intellect potential and cognitive performance due to a decrease in blood oxygen and subsequent brain hypoxia. Note – some changes may be irreversible.” According to a report in the American Journal of Infection Control, “Surgical masks are designed to prevent bacteria and other particles from contaminating a sterile field, as when a surgeon is performing an operation. Surgical masks are not designed to prevent the wearer from inhaling viruses…. surgical masks should not be expected to provide respiratory protection. SURGICAL MASKS SHOULD NOT BE USED TO PROTECT PEOPLE FROM THE H1N1.” One point that isn’t mentioned much in the media, concerning face masks, is that surgical masks are designed and approved for sterile environments. Those sterile environments are operating rooms where additional oxygen (O) is pumped into the room to provide the necessary extra oxygen for the mask-wearing doctors and assistants. They are not designed for office use, outdoor use, in crowds, or even the grocery store. In a non-sterile environment, a surgical mask quickly becomes saturated with particulates and contaminants, especially from cross- contamination associated with constant hand-to-mask contact. This is why the recommendation is to change the mask after just 20 minutes of use, and that’s if the user doesn’t Continued on page 3

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Masks for Protection Against Covid-19 ... The Great Deception! Continued from page 1

PUBLICATION STAFF Publisher / Editor Rick Downing Contributing Editors / Writers Kathleen Marquardt Megan Quinn Sandy Woodthorpe Production / Layout Barb Fontanelle Christine Mantush Advertising Sales Rick Downing Subscription / Circulation Donna Downing Editorial, Circulation & Advertising Office 6075 Hopkins Rd. Mentor, OH 44060 Ph: 440-257-6453 Fax: 440-257-6459 Email: downassoc2@oh.rr.com www.securityshreddingnews.com

contaminate the mask with his/her hands during the 20-minute period. It does not take an N95 mask to cause harm to the wearer. First, anyone with a respiratory health condition should NOT wear a mask of any kind, at any time. Yet, we see many businesses, healthcare facilities and doctor’s offices that will not allow anyone to enter without a mask. In the case of healthcare facilities and doctor’s offices, those with health conditions must either endanger themselves more by wearing a mask or forego services that might be vital to their health. Numerous sources, including Blaylock, ACS Chem Neurosci, Journal of Virology, NCIB/NIH, JAMA, CIDRAP, and others, have documented that mask-wearing can be harmful. From headaches, upon an hour of mask-wearing, to much more dangerous effects. In one of the most quoted sources, binReza, et al, from 2012 concluded that, “None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.” And, as Dr. Blaylock states: •

Mask wearing causes hypoxia and hypocapnia. Hypoxia is a diminished availability of oxygen to the body tissues. Hypocapnia is a deficiency of carbon dioxide in the blood, which eventually leads to alkalosis.

•

Those with pulmonary disease – asthma, pulmonary edema, COPD, show decreased oxygenation and increased carbon dioxide (CO2) in the blood.

•

Pregnant women have a need for a higher intake of oxygen (and their bodies normally have a lower CO2 accumulation to protect the baby). A study of pregnant women wearing masks showed a 35% decrease in their ability to exchange air. As their oxygenation levels fell, CO2 began to accumulate in their bodies. As they normally have lower CO2 accumulation to protect the baby, if their accumulation were to rise to normal levels, it would be harmful to the baby. These results alone limited the study; they didn’t dare do more. Yet, no state is telling pregnant women that they shouldn’t wear masks, especially for long periods of time.

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•

Those with obesity have poor oxygen intake to begin with. Wearing a mask could cause it to drop precipitously, causing a crisis.

•

There are tens of millions of diabetics. Dr. Blaylock says THEY SHOULD NOT BE WEARING MASKS.

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•

The build-up of CO2 could damage the brain. Those who have seizures are particularly at risk. In normal people, it causes hyperexcitability in the cortex which precipitates seizures.

•

An elevation in CO2 causes anxiety, blood pressure rise, breathlessness, and panic attacks. The bipolar person is highly sensitive to those effects.

•

When CO2 levels rise and O levels fall, it suppresses immunity by inhibiting T-lymphocytes – the ones that fight viruses. Hypoxia makes it worse because it increases the level of a compound called hypoxia inducible factor, which inhibits T-lymphocytes. Not only that, it stimulates another type of cell, the T-regs (immune suppressor cells which exacerbate immune suppression). (Note: from the Journal of Immunology, “This sets the stage for contracting any infection, including COVID-19, and making the consequences of that infection much graver. In essence, your mask may very well put you at an increased risk of infection and, if so, cause a much worse outcome. People with cancer, especially if the cancer has spread, will be at a further risk from prolonged hypoxia as the cancer grows best in a microenvironment that is low in oxygen.”)

•

Seemingly, no one in society is in any danger from the virus unless you already have an immune suppressing disorder. If worn too long, the mask itself is producing immune suppression. The rise in CO2 can cause cardiac arrythmia, and fragile heart patients can experience hypoxia and hypocapnia. There are cognitive effects – brain fog, confusion, difficulty thinking and speaking, along with anxiety.

•

Repeated hypoxia stress, when oxygen levels fall, causes atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), heart attacks, and stroke from hypercoagulation of the blood.

•

By wearing a mask, the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages, enter the olfactory nerves and travel to the brain.

MASK SAFETY

OVID-19 enters the body through the mouth, nose, or eyes, and, according to researchers at the University of Hong Kong, the virus can adhere to the outer layer of a face mask for a week. Because the mask is ‘catching’ the virus germs before they can enter the body, Continued on page 4

Security Shredding News Summer 2020

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Masks for Protection Against CoviD-19 ... The Great Deception! Continued from page 3

it could possibly be contaminated with the coronavirus or any other virus. So, improperly wearing the mask can increase the risk of contamination. If your hands touch the outside of the mask improperly (not using the elastic to put it on and take it off), or you adjust it frequently, you can be exposing yourself while thinking you are safely protected. According to the CDC, “If the inside of the mask touches another part of the body that is contaminated with the virus – hair, forehead, chin, neck, hands, other clothing – and then returned to cover the nose and mouth area, infection can occur.”

WHY PROMOTE MASKS FOR THE MASSES?

his brings us to the question, why the national fervor for wearing masks? Why the push, first by WHO and CDC, then governors, mayors, and down the line? Never before in history have healthy people been told to wear masks. The research shows us why both healthy people and the compromised should not wear masks. Only those who have a communicable disease should be wearing masks – and only when in close distance to healthy people, and never for any length of time. The patent answer (to the above question) is to follow the money. And there is a lot of money involved, both to design and then set up vaccines “for the whole world”. Our civilization has gone through a lot of catastrophes. The most recent one regarding diseases was the Spanish Flu of 1918. Since then we’ve gone a century with polio, smallpox, AIDS, and some small scares more recently that were predicted to be devastating – SARS, Dengue Fever, Mad Cow Disease. But then the coronavirus COVID-19 came along right after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Johns Hopkins University, and the World Economic Forum staged Event 201, which simulated an outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people “that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic. The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms”. This Event 201, conducted October 18, 2019, was ostensibly put together to help the world’s leading experts work out scenarios on how to deal with such an event, if one ever occurred. But one has to wonder how they managed to come up with a pandemic so closely mimicking real-life COVID-19. Then, some five months later in an interview with the Curator of TED Talks, Chris Anderson, Bill Gates “. . . outlined that, despite the comparatively small threat of COVID-19, he and his colleagues ‘don’t want a lot of recovered people’ who have acquired natural immunity. They instead are hoping we become reliant on vaccines and anti-viral medication. At the coronavirus simulation, Event 201, a poll, which was part of the simulation, said that 65% of people in the U.S. would be eager to take a vaccine to treat such a virus, “even if it’s experimental.” Gates also said in the TED interview, “It is really tragic that the economic effects of this are very dramatic. I mean, nothing like this has ever happened to the economy in our lifetimes. But … bringing the economy

back ,… that’s more of a reversible thing than bringing people back to life. So we’re going to take the pain in the economic dimension, huge pain, in order to minimize the pain in disease and death dimension.” The World Economy is dropping dramatically. In an article in OffGuardian, Kevin Ryan points out that, “By all accounts, the impact of the response will be great, far-reaching, and long-lasting.” Rosemary Frei, in her article, Did Bill Gates Just Reveal the Reason Behind the Lock Downs? said, “Bill Gates outlined that, despite the comparatively small threat of coronavirus, he and his colleagues ‘don’t want a lot of recovered people’ who have acquired natural immunity. They instead are hoping we become reliant on vaccines and anti-viral medication. Shockingly, Gates also suggests people be made to have a digital ID showing their vaccination status, and that people without this ‘digital immunity proof’ would not be allowed to travel. Such an approach would mean very big money for vaccine producers.” Cheryl Chumley, in the Washington Times, declares that “In fact, COVID-19 will go down as one of the political world’s biggest, most shamefully overblown, overhyped, overly and irrationally inflated and outright deceptively flawed responses to a health matter in American history, one that was carried largely on the lips of medical professionals who have no business running a national economy or government.” Kevin Ryan, in Is the Coronavirus Scare a Psychological Operation, notes that, “governments have used psychological warfare throughout history to manipulate public opinion, gain political advantage, and generate profits. Western governments have engaged in such tactics in the war on terrorism as well as in its predecessor, the war on Communism. It appears that the same kinds of effects are being seen as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In both cases, state-sponsored terrorism and propaganda were used to distort the public’s perception of the threats, leading to increased governmental control of society and huge financial benefits for corporations.” This is definitely something to consider. Bill Gates isn’t the only technocrat involved. Dr. Anthony Fauci (CDC), Dr. Deborah Birx (White House coronavirus coordinator), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (Director General of WHO), Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness (CEPI ), George Soros, and nine pharmaceutical companies are all working to produce a coronavirus vaccine – including Moderna, Inovio, and SmithKline. But Bill Gates appears to be the main player. Pat Wood, editor of Technocracy News and Trends believes, “It is imperative to understand that the ‘Great Panic of 2020’ is engineered around the pandemic by Technocrats who are driven to take over and control the whole planet, and especially the United States.” Rosemary Frei points out that, “The increasing outsourcing of health care policy to medical bureaucrats during the COVID-19 crisis illustrates the dangerous temptation to remove control over policy from democratic deliberation in favor of a technocracy, i.e., rule by ‘experts.’ In health care, such a system would be particularly perilous since the experts placed in charge of policy would be ‘bioethicists’ whose predominant views disparage the sanctity of human life.”

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Do Mask Requirements Violate Civil Rights and Medical Privacy?

AFAYETTE, LA – On July 23, as Louisiana surpassed 100,000 known COVID-19 cases, Gov. John Bel Edwards renewed his Declaration of Emergency, originally proclaimed in March. The governor’s Phase Two proclamation includes a statewide mask mandate and additional restrictions, according to the state’s official website. Section 3 of the Phase Two proclamation states: “Every individual in Louisiana shall wear a face covering over the nose and mouth when inside a commercial establishment or any other building or space open to the public, whether indoor or outdoor. This shall include public or commercial modes of transportation.” The statewide mask mandate applies to all 64 parishes in Louisiana. However, parishes with a COVID-19 incidence of fewer than 100 cases per 100,000 people for the most recent two-week period for which data is available can choose to opt out of the mandate. News station KATC spoke with Lafayette attorney, Stephen Sullivan, who specializes in healthcare law about how federal patient privacy rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Privacy Act (HIPAA) apply.

If a concerned business owner asks reasonable questions about a customer’s health condition, in order to keep staff and others safe, is this in violation of HIPAA? Sullivan clarified that HIPAA protects health information in the possession of a healthcare provider, which includes any licensed practitioner who provides health care in exchange for payment. The provider is required by HIPAA to protect health information from disclosure without the consent of the patient. HIPAA, nor any other law, does not prevent a premises owner from asking reasonable questions about a customer’s health, the attorney continued. Thus, during a pandemic with an Executive Order requiring individuals to wear

a mask, business owners are well within their rights and may have a duty to exclude anyone who is not wearing a mask or otherwise presents a risk of harm to others, he explained. KATC also asked about viewers’ concerns that the governor’s mask mandate may infringe on their civil liberties. “There is no civil right to do as you chose, if by doing so you present a risk of harm which infringes on the rights of others,” Sullivan said. “The Civil Rights Act prevents discrimination based on race, religion, sex and national origin. There is no protection for legitimate discrimination by business owners against customers who for health or any other reason will not mask.”

U.S. Paper Industry Achieves Consistently High Recycling Rate

ASHINGTON – The American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) recently announced that 66.2 percent of paper consumed in the United States was recovered for recycling in 2019. Over the last decade, the U.S. paper industry achieved a consistently high recycling rate, meeting or exceeding 63 percent since 2009 — a rate that is nearly doubled since 1990, when the industry first set a paper recycling goal. The recycling rate for old corrugated containers (OCC) in 2019 was 92.0 percent, and the three-year average OCC recycling rate is 92.3 percent. “Paper recycling continues to be an environmental success story,” said AF&PA President and CEO Heidi Brock. “More than twice as much paper is recycled than is sent to landfills, saving an average of 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space for each ton of paper recycled. This is a testament to consumer behavior and an industry commitment to paper recycling. AF&PA members continue to invest in manufacturing infrastructure that will allow us to recycle even more paper in the years ahead.” For more information about U.S. paper recycling statistics, paper recycling and AF&PA’s commitment to sustainability, visit www. paperrecycles.org.

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Lighte r Weigh t

Heav i Burd er en

Extended producer responsibility laws for electronics need to better reflect changing markets and the more lightweight and complex scrap stream, recyclers say. By Megan Quinn

lectronics takeback events throughout New York state can attract a steady crowd. Often scheduled right after the holidays or just after the spring thaw, the takebacks invite residents to drop off old electronic devices like laptops and televisions in an effort to keep them out of the landfill. Takebacks are significant business for e-scrap recycler Sunnking (Brockport, N.Y.). About 50% of its volume comes from collection events and year-round municipal drop-off sites. At a particularly successful electronics takeback event, Sunnking can fill 18 tractor-trailer loads in three

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hours, says Vice President Adam Shine. The popularity of these events comes from Sunnking’s partnership with state politicians, who use their platforms and mailing budgets to get the word out to constituents, he says. “These politicians can send mailers to 30,000 homes or more. When people see it and see that it’s from their state assemblyman, a person they know and trust, they’re more likely to bring their electronics to the drop-off.” The public sees electronics takeback events as a convenient service, but electronics manufacturers and retailers are motivated to support them in New York and 24 other states because of extended producer responsibility laws, which stipulate that the original equipment manufacturers and electronics retailers must ensure their end-of-life consumer electronic products get recycled. Most U.S. EPR laws require electronics manufacturers to establish and finance programs to recycle end-of-life electronics like televisions and computers. The specifics are different in each state, but most of these laws require manufacturers to collect a certain weight of a specified set of end-of-life electronic products each year. The states leave it up to the manufacturers to hire processors, collectors, and others who will help them meet their EPR obligations. States set a weight requirement that’s typically a percentage of the total weight of the covered electronic products sold in that state based on market share. If Manufacturer X has 10% of the market share in that state, for example, it would be responsible for collecting 10% of the total weight of the covered electronics sold in the state that year. In the state of New York, OEMs hire Sunnking and other companies to recycle qualifying electronics. The recyclers log the weight and type of the products they receive, and they report that information and the downstream disposition of the products to the OEMs. Providing recycling services to help OEMs meet their EPR obligations has been integral to Sunnking’s business model since 2011, when New York adopted its electronics EPR law. Shine says EPR programs have always been a gamble for recyclers, however, because the changing electronics stream affects how much OEMs pay recyclers for their services—and how much value recyclers can get out of the products when they refurbish or recycle them. Advocates say EPR laws encourage residents to recycle electronics instead of tossing them in the landfill, which helps keep hazardous materials including mercury and lead out of the environment. EPR laws also are meant to make manufacturers bear the cost of properly recycling electronics. Many electronic products are complex and contain hazardous components that need to be removed by hand. Those and other components might require special handling or have low or no scrap value. Thus, EPR laws create a greater economic incentive to recycle them. Continued on next page

Security Shredding News Continued from previous page

Yet many recyclers say EPR funding formulas no longer match the realities of today’s electronics recycling market. Most EPR laws went into effect more than 10 years ago, when electronics were heavier and more homogenous. Today’s electronic scrap stream is more diverse, lighter weight, and even more complex, meaning recyclers need more labor, time, and money to get the same or less value out of the electronics the laws cover, says Craig Boswell, president of HOBI International (Dallas).

A Weighty Problem

he number and type of electronics sold each year has increased since the 1990s, but these devices are far smaller and lighter than ever before, according to a 2017 study from the Rochester Institute of Technology, Staples Sustainable Innovation Lab, and the Consumer Technology Association. The total weight of consumer electronics sold each year in the United States peaked in 2000; by 2015, the weight of these electronics had dipped to its lowest level since 1993, even though manufacturers were selling hundreds of millions more units each year, according to the study. Most of the change is “due to phasing out heavy products like cathode ray tube TVs and substitution with lightweight flat panel displays,” the report states, and many new products are now made with lighter materials such as aluminum or plastic instead of steel. Lightweighting is a problem in EPR programs because most states measure success by weight. If OEMs can’t collect their required weight, they can be barred from selling their new electronics in that state, says Megan Tabb, director of sales and compliance for Synergy Electronics Recycling (Madison, N.C.). “A decrease in weight doesn’t mean fewer electronics are collected,” she says. “In most counties in North Carolina, where we do business, collection [weight] is going down because the main items that used to be recycled, CRT televisions, are slowly leaving the waste stream. LCD screens are more common and weigh a lot less.” The glut of end-of-life CRTs in the early and mid-2000s is one reason so many states decided to adopt EPR laws, Boswell says. They are difficult to recycle because each one contains several pounds of leaded glass, which requires special handling for safety and to comply with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations. Even when the glass is processed properly, its low value and shrinking demand make it hard to recycle into new products. EPR programs were meant to address these issues by getting OEMs to pay part of the processing costs, he says. “We’ve flushed the majority of [CRTs] out of the system, so the stream is shifting away from lead-containing CRTs and toward how we process LCDs and LED monitors. CRTs were very heavy. Now that those have flushed through the stream, is it fair to measure [performance] by weight as other electronics get lighter and lighter?” he asks. The shift away from CRTs also affects how e-scrap recyclers do business, Shine adds. “Back in 2010, the market was very different,” he says. There were still several firms that wanted to buy CRTs, and Sunnking often sold these electronics to companies that did their own CRT glass processing to sell to smelters or other markets, he explains. “With CRTs, you could still get rid of those for less money, and there were even charities that would take them for free. Ultimately, [Sunnking] felt that if manufacturers could pay the cost to cover freight and packaging, and we got the CRTs to our door, we could make some money from that.” But CRT recycling challenges remain, he says. “We’re upside down on CRTs now. After labor and equipment costs, you can’t make money” because many end markets for CRTs have disappeared, but Sunnking and other recyclers are still on the hook to accept CRT devices and send them to the appropriate downstream processor. The money Sunnking makes in its EPR contracts often doesn’t cover what he pays to those processors or the cost of transporting the material, Shine says.

State EPR laws vary widely in terms of which electronics they consider “covered electronic devices,” meaning OEMs can count them in their recycling totals. Washington, for example, accepts computers, monitors, e-readers, tablets, TVs, and portable DVD players. New York covers the widest range of devices, including virtual reality headsets and processors, video game consoles, and 3D printers, according to the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. The state that covers the fewest devices, Missouri, only includes laptops, desktop computers, and computer monitors. Laptops and other electronic products are on many state EPR lists because they’re so common in American households, and because of landfill bans associated with these products, not because of the intrinsic value of the commodities inside, says Amanda Tischer Buros, program compliance manager of Dynamic Lifecycle Innovations (Onalaska, Wis.). Recyclers with OEM contracts must recycle covered electronic devices regardless of how valuable each item or its parts and recyclable commodities might be. In the past few years, even the higher-value items contain less valuable material than before, she says. And as electronics become more complex and smaller, it takes more time and labor to dismantle them to recover recyclable or resalable material and remove and properly dispose of hazards, squeezing recyclers’ margins even further. “There’s been a lot of market volatility,” she says. “As weights decrease, there’s also a large loss in the intrinsic value of the commodities that make up the scrap stream. Precious metal content has been depleted. Circuit boards have less precious metal. We’re constantly trying to improve our processes and technology and figure out Continued on page 8

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Lighter Weight, Heavier Burden Continued from page 7

how we can process materials efficiently and effectively.” Other factors contribute to EPR contracts looking less attractive to recyclers, such as products that come from consumer takeback programs that are lower in value or have a shrinking percentage of precious metals inside. In places where EPR laws allow contractors to repair or resell some of the electronics, some of the products are too old or damaged to be worth the effort, or there are too many types of products to sort through to determine their repair or resale value, recyclers say.

Course Adjustments

ome states have responded to product lightweighting by adjusting EPR weight obligations. OEMs in Oregon, for example, were collectively last able to meet their weight goals in 2011, so the state started allowing OEMs to use “credits” in the form of pounds left over from previous years’ collections toward later years’ collection requirements. In 2018, Oregon’s EPR program, Oregon E-cycles, required OEMs to collect 21.77 million pounds, which was 77% of the weight it required of them in the previous year. OEMs in the state still fell short of that goal, bringing in just 20.25 million pounds, the program reports. Oregon lowered its weight requirements again in 2019, to 17.25 million pounds, about 4.5 pounds per capita. The state did not have final numbers on whether OEMs met the obligation by early March, but it announced in

January that it will ask OEMs to collect even less—just 13.75 million pounds, or 3.2 pounds per capita—in 2020. New York and South Carolina are two other states that change their goals each year by averaging collection totals from the last three years. The adjusted numbers are supposed to strike a balance between encouraging OEMs to collect enough to keep electronics out of the waste stream, but not so much that the task is unattainable, Tabb says. However, the weight adjustments don’t get announced until later in the year, which can leave recyclers with extra material OEMs won’t pay for, she says. “Honestly, I think South Carolina reduced its goal by too much,” she says. The state reduced its collection requirement in 2019, and Synergy and several other recyclers who process electronics for OEMs there “didn’t have their weight covered” at the end of the year. “Say the state sets a goal of 15 million pounds, for example, but recyclers process 17 million pounds. That’s 2 million pounds left over that manufacturers don’t have to pay for,” according to these contracts, she explains. Recyclers in New York have run into a similar problem, Shine says. “The [weight requirements] are based on last year’s weight, but the reporting for last year isn’t due until March 1 … then in June or July they announce the goal” for the current year, he says. Typically, manufacturers know they need to meet some kind of goal, Continued on next page

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cost solution within the parameters the law a recycler and an EPR management consultant establishes,” he says. throughout the United States, particularly in so they continue paying for the electronics that Some states, such as Washington and New the Midwest. This dual role insulates them Sunnking and other recyclers with whom they York, stipulate that consumers should not somewhat from market and material flow have EPR contracts are processing, “but they’re have to pay to recycle EPR-eligible electronics fluctuations, Tischer Buros says. “In many states, conservative with how much they buy” until the unless they dispose of them through “premium we are a physical processor,” she says, “but in all state releases the official program numbers, he services” such as curbside or home pick-up. EPR states, we offer administrative services” to says. When an OEM meets its quota, it stops Shine says consumers end up paying for it OEMs to help ensure they are managing the paying. If Sunnking is still collecting electronics anyway because manufacturers in those states program and paperwork correctly. when the OEMs meet their goal, it ends up with “are tucking the cost into new products instead.” excess material and doesn’t get paid for the Another way to pay Clayton agrees that EPR schemes often processing costs, he says. “That makes it really ome critics say state EPR programs need inflate the prices for new products because hard to budget for the year.” Luckily, he says, cost-structure adjustments so recyclers can “manufacturers must cover their costs, but it has been several years since Sunnking2020 has paid a fair&price that reflects experienced that issue. Securityget Shredding Storage News the changing when manufacturers increase electronics prices, distributors and retailers mark up prices based scrap stream, the decrease in valuable materials, Combo and added labor costs. OEMs usually do the on the new price manufacturers charge, and this Building a business on EPR Half 5 7/16”(w) x 7 1/8”(h) bare -minimum to meet the EPR requirements, can lead to hidden recycling fees that are not tate EPR laws are typically written for the Island Boswell says. “They are driven to find the lowestContinued on page 10 electronics manufacturers, not the recyclers who must actually process the materials, Boswell says, and each firm has to determine if it can operate profitably with the terms and conditions EPR processing contracts provide. “It’s your job to make sure the recovery value is more than what [OEMs] are paying you, or your costs are less,” he says. HOBI does not participate in EPR schemes because it sees more stability and value in business to business recycling, he adds. EPR schemes appear attractive to some recyclers because OEMs can offer them a steady stream of material and guaranteed per-pound processing fees regardless of market conditions. “In our industry, it’s very supply-driven. Where can we find sources of supply for electronics? The consumer stream is a large supply source,” Boswell says. “The question is, can I participate in that market under the constraints of certain laws, and is it possible to sustain that long term?” Recyclers hoping to lock in relationships with OEMs have also created steep price competition for the contracts, Boswell adds. “Early on, the price competition generated some bad behavior” where recyclers quoted extremely low service prices and cut corners to make their margins—then quickly went out of business, he says. Joe Clayton, vice president of business development for electronics recycler ARCOA (Waukegan, Ill.), says many OEMs would rather sign one or two large contracts with recyclers that can handle electronics recycling in multiple states instead of incurring the costs of undertaking the extensive due diligence required to hire multiple recyclers in each state. More than 50 OEMs, including Panasonic, Sharp, and Toshiba, do business with Electronic Manufacturers Recycling Management Co. (Minneapolis), or MRM, a consortium that oversees state EPR compliance on their behalf. Last year, MRM announced it had facilitated the recycling of 1 billion pounds of e-scrap cDL • NON-cDL • PIERcE-&-TEAR • SINGLE-SHAFT through EPR programs. The consortium offers convenience for the OEMs, but it locks out (336) 285-0021 • 5708 UwHARRIE ROAD, ARcHDALE, Nc 27263 smaller recyclers hoping to get a piece of the pie, Clayton says. www.vEcOPLANLLc.cOM Dynamic Lifecycle Innovations acts as both

PLANT-BASED AND MOBILE SHREDDING SYSTEMS

Security Shredding News Summer 2020

Security Shredding News

Lighter Weight, Heavier Burden Continued from page 9

used for recycling,” he says. Ultimately, a consumer might be paying $20$40 more for a television or laptop because of successive markups, he says. Tischer Buros believes states with a shared cost structure more fairly distribute the responsibility and “make the programs better able to weather the market changes and be more stable.” She points to Wisconsin’s program, where “the consumer, collector, recycler, and manufacturer all share in the cost of recycling.” Collectors charge consumers about $20 per electronic device, but some collection points, such as municipal programs, might take the electronics for free, she says. “As a consumer, you’ve used the product, so you’re part of the shared responsibility,” she says. The collector then takes the electronics to the recycler, and the two parties negotiate costs based on the value of the items the collector needs recycled. By allowing each entity to negotiate prices, there’s more buy-in and thus each party is more interested in the EPR program’s success, she says. “Sometimes everything is priced per pound, sometimes it’s a commodity with a positive value that offsets other negative-value items in the mix. The payments all depend on the contract,” she says. California has a slightly different funding system for collecting and recycling certain electronics called an advance recovery fee. Consumers pay the fee—about $5 to $7 per television or laptop, Clayton says—at the point of sale, and the retailer remits the fee back to the state, which uses the money to partially subsidize the collection and recycling of the covered electronic products. Clayton says his job is to help companies with OEM contracts comply with each state’s specifications and tonnage collection requirements, but he believes that EPR schemes don’t reflect the free market and therefore don’t work well for consumers, recyclers, or manufacturers. ARFs are better than EPR schemes because consumers pay less in the long run for the cost of recycling, he says. You don’t have “multiple hands pulling off parts of the pie” through markups and other inflated costs, he says. As a believer

in free-market economics, he would prefer that electronics follow the path of most other commercial recyclables, where demand for the product or its commodities drives collection and recycling, he says.

Future Considerations

alf of the states in the United States have some type of EPR scheme, and Boswell says that is unlikely to change. “No EPR law is perfect, and I think even those that support EPR think there can be some improvements,” he says. In addition to rethinking EPR policies’ effect on the market, future discussions about EPR laws will likely include revisiting covered product scopes and thinking more deeply about data security concerns, Tischer Buros says. “Data privacy is a big thing that has become more relevant in the last 10 years, and we haven’t seen that issue be covered in a lot of these laws,” she says. “Europe has tackled that from a consumer data perspective, and the United States is going to need to go on that journey in the next few years.” Shine agrees that there needs to be a better system for making sure personal data is safe throughout the takeback process. Recyclers say states also need policy changes that better reflect the newer devices finding their way into the recycling stream. “Devices are getting smaller, but there are more of them, so there’s an opportunity to expand what we do,” Shine says. “But there will have to be more fees associated with processing them, especially with respect to labor. So you’ll see a big shift in the next 10 years, and I think EPR laws will have to shift with them. Electronics are everything to us. They’re everywhere.” Megan Quinn is senior reporter/writer for Scrap. Copyright© 2020 Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from the March/April 2020 issue of Scrap, www.scrap.org.

ADVERTISER NEWS

Vecoplan Increases Focus on Paper Market

RCHDALE, NC – Vecoplan, LLC announced that it has invested in its facility and staff to increase focus on the paper and document shredding markets. At its Archdale headquarters, the manufacturing and assembly facility was expanded by 7,000 square feet in later 2019 and early 2020 to increase production capacity for the mobile shredding market. “After making available a truck product with a ‘pierce-&tear’ shredder, the uptick in sales meant we needed more space for production. Their singleshaft‑rotor shredder is still available and continues to be available to those that need versatility and high security shredding. With the combined sales volume of the two products, we needed to add the square footage to support our customer pipeline,” explains COO Len Beusse. The facility expansion comprises of a production line to accommodate up to five trucks, one for each stage of assembly. “Whether we have one customer order for five trucks, or five orders for one truck, our order-to-delivery time has been shortened significantly. The discrete workflow system is a hybrid between batch and repetitive and can favor one or the other processes depending on the customization required. This is optimal for serving our customers,” notes plant manager Mike Dawkins. In addition to facility expansion, the company has also hired two new salespeople. Keith Coker is based in the Dallas area and covers the central regions of the US and Canada. He joins Vecoplan after spending several years at a large national document shredding services provider. In the west, Sean Eliot, based in Southern California, brings ten years of recycling industry experience to Vecoplan customers. He specializes in turnkey size reduction solutions, focusing on affordability and practicality. He covers the Western US and Canada for mobile and plant-based paper shred markets.

10 Security Shredding News Summer 2020

NWRA Urges President Trump to Suspend FET Through 2021

rlington, VA – In a letter to President Donald Trump, the National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA) joined other state and national trade associations, as well as private companies, urging the president to suspend the 12 percent Federal Excise Tax (FET) on new heavy-duty trucks and trailers until the end of 2021. Truck sales in the United States are expected to decline by 50 percent in 2020. NWRA says that suspending the FET could save or bring back almost 8 million jobs. “The FET adds $30,000 to the cost of a new truck. We believe suspending the FET will spur the sales of new, cleaner trucks that would help rebuild our economy. These trucks have the latest safety technologies that would help make our roads safer,” said NWRA President and CEO Darrell Smith. The average age of a truck on the road is 10 years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. has become more dependent on the trucking fleet for the delivery of goods and supplies as well as the collection and disposal of waste and recycling.

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Inside This Issue

VOL. 17 NO. 2

Summer 2020

Masks for Protection Against CoviD-19 ... The Great Deception! PAGE 1 Do Mask Requirements Violate Civil Rights and Medical Privacy? PAGE 5 Lighter Weight, Heavier Burden Extended producer responsibility laws for electronics need to better reflect changing markets and the more lightweight and complex scrap stream, recyclers say

PAGE 6

NWRA Urges President Trump to Suspend FET Through 2021 PAGE 9

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