Tim Worstall

Tvind and Humana

No, I’m not a fan of Tvind nor Humana and their actions in simply placing recycling bins without permission are obviously wrong.

ASDA has evicted a network of clothing recyclers from its car parks
after discovering that the companies behind donation bins are not
registered charities.

The supermarket sent a legal letter to Planet Aid, a company
linked to the mysterious Danish organisation Humana People to People,
asking it to remove all bins before this past weekend. Some had
appeared overnight without permission.

But there’s something I find really rather odd in the tone of the discussion. That it is somehow immoral for someone to attempt to make money out of recycling. We faced this a few years ago, we were looking into computer recycling. If you can get hold of a mountain of the stuff it’s profitable to extract the metals (yes, even without sending it all to China).

So I spoke to a few local councils (who were, at the time, complaining about getting mountains of the stuff) and said, well, give it to us (it was, at the time, ultra vires for them to charge for it) and we’ll recycle it.

We met with blank refusals because we admitted that yes, we were hoping to turn a profit by doing so.  Very weird to my thinking. No one was in fact reprocessing this scrap (only reasonably modern machines that still worked were desired by the charities) so what did it matter what was the motivation? Surely getting the recycling done is the important thing?

Apparently not. Motives must be pure or Gaia is not appeased I suppose.

In

8 responses

  1. Not Saussure Avatar
    Not Saussure

    A Missed Trick?

    Reply
  2. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    Ahem . .
    “The UK trading watchdog is urging householders to be wary of bogus charity collectors. Genuine charities are losing £1m a year because people mistakenly give unwanted belongings to con artists. The Office of Fair Trading said they were tempting households with flyers promising to distribute unwanted belongings to poor countries.”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3430119.stm
    I get regular leaflets through my letter box asking for old clothes suggesting that these will be distributed to poor countries and note that the leaflets do not actually claim to be on behalf of a duly registered charity. It’s as well to be alert about alternative agendas these days:
    “A lawyer who may be struck off over his role in the controversial miners’ compensation scheme was the highest paid solicitor in Britain last year, a survey claims.
    “Andrew Nulty, senior partner of Warrington firm Avalon Solicitors, is under investigation by the Law Society for professional misconduct and faces a disciplinary hearing before the Society’s tribunal.
    “According to The Lawyer, Mr Nulty’s firm earned £14.4 million, or 68 per cent of its revenue, through a Government-backed scheme allowing miners to claim compensation for respiratory and other diseases. He personally made £13 million.”
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,200-2322646,00.html
    “The Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) has published guidelines to prevent businesses from getting caught up in cold-calling charity publishing scams. Fake publishers have been calling UK businesses asking for donations or to place adverts in publications including charity booklets, emergency services magazines and children’s hospital activity books. The reality of these approaches is that very few of these adverts ever get printed . . ”
    http://www.businesseye.org.uk/511319.html
    “Inside Out investigates and exposes a company that claims to collect for charity. The company targets bars and pubs of the south and are scamming the public out of thousands of pounds. It is not unusual to find organisations appealing for donations in public places – even pubs and bars. Alcohol may make you more generous, but it may also cloud judgement. Inside Out investigates one organisation who are believed to be conning the public out of thousands of pounds. . . ”
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/south/series2/charity_scam_nightingale_undercover_expose.shtml

    Reply
  3. JuliaM Avatar
    JuliaM

    “there’s something I find really rather odd in the tone of the discussion. That it is somehow immoral for someone to attempt to make money out of recycling.”
    No, I think ASDA’s point is that the organisation is playing the charity angle without being a legal charity. Also the placing of bins on their property without permission.
    And like Bob B above, I too get mailshots through the door requesting clothes, etc for ‘aid’ which (on closer inspection) are not charities, but reselling companies, usually Eastern European or African based.
    Good for ASDA in attempting to put a stop to it on their sites.

    Reply
  4. dearieme Avatar
    dearieme

    Your tale about the profit-hating types in local government reminds me of a measure I’d like to see reported of youngsters at the age when they first look for jobs: by how many generations are they removed from the last member of their family who made a living in the market sector of the economy?

    Reply
  5. Martin Avatar
    Martin

    Dearieme,
    There speaks a man with a University of Cambridge e-mail address…

    Reply
  6. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    I don’t think it’s got much to do with profit-hating local government.
    Economists used to insist that informed choices are a necessary condition for markets to be (Paretian) efficient and the OFT very properly reminded folks in Britain that some commercial operators collecting clothes are pretending to be charities when they aren’t.
    Once upon a time when the world was still young, as I fondly recall, we used to have men who came round on a cart and horse calling Rag a’Bone – a bit like Steptoe & Son. In those times, handing over unwanted clothes was mutually recognised as a commercial transaction but then things got Modernised and now we have con men and spinners instead.
    Remember Alastair Campbell’s dossier on Mass Deception and the 45-minutes?
    In 2003, Tony Blair said to the G8 heads of government that “he stood ‘100%’ by the evidence shown to the public about Iraq’s alleged weapons programmes. ‘Frankly, the idea that we doctored intelligence reports in order to invent some notion about a 45-minute capability for delivering weapons of mass destruction is completely and totally false.’”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2955036.stm

    Reply
  7. pete Avatar
    pete

    Many people employed by the public don’t seem to like profit. This is strange as they only differ from the rest of us in the employer they set off every morning to sell their labour to. The council school headmaster returns home each evening with more cash than the janitor at his school, because he has made more profit from trading with his employer than his janitor. This kind of profit is the type which is somehow OK.

    Reply
  8. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    There’s a conceptual difference between rents, making profits and earning a return to capital employed in a competitive product market equivalent to the opportunity cost of the capital. Try Frank Knight on: Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921):
    http://www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/Knight/knRUP.html
    In Knightian terms, profits are the difference between expected and realised returns in a business after meeting all required contractual obligations for the period, including the premiums payable to cover for insurable risks. In that sense, headmasters don’t make “profits” from doing their job. For a business operating in a competitive environment and meeting contractual obligations, if the owners and managers of the business don’t and can’t expect to earn a return to the capital employed equivalent to what that capital could earn if invested in the capital market then they need to think about whether the business should be kept going.
    On the public services, try new thinking as in today’s news:
    “At the first interim launch of one of six policy reviews set up by David Cameron, the Conservative leader, the party tried to shed its image of being hostile to public services and professionals such as teachers and social workers.
    “Oliver Letwin, the Conservative policy chief, dismissed calls from those within his own party for an emphasis on cuts in taxes cuts by declaring: ‘We need an unambiguous commitment to growth in public services.’ The report, which was chaired by former chief schools inspector Baroness Perry and former health secretary Stephen Dorrell, called the party to reject the principle of ‘public bad, private good’, and to have a new partnership with the professions.”
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17129-2342807,00.html
    Just a thought.

    Reply

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