Editor's Focus -- Too Much Information

Comedians have built routines around the problem of "too much information," in most cases referring to acquaintances or even strangers who share personal details about their lives that would have been better off remaining undisclosed.

Many scrap recyclers and brokers have faced a "too-much-information" problem of a different sort this year, as they labor to comply with export regulations being put into place by the Chinese Government’s Department of Supervision on Inspection General Administration of Quality Supervision Inspection and Quarantine of China (AQSIQ).

AQSIQ initially set a very fast deadline (July 1, 2004—since delayed) for scrap exporters to meet, allowing just a couple of months to fill out a considerable load of paperwork in order to be registered or permitted to ship scrap commodities to China.

The primary reason AQSIQ has put the export registration process in place is to control the shipment quality, with a particular eye on preventing shipments of sub-standard mixed loads that either border on solid waste or that contain scrap electronics or other forms of scrap that could pose health hazards to manual laborers and other production workers in China.

The sheer volume of paperwork has presented one problem, while the nature of some of it has also ruffled some feathers. According to some recyclers, they have been asked to provide floor plans and other operations details to the Chinese government.

The suspicion exists that the Chinese government is helping itself to some American and European best practices in scrap recycling at the same time it imposes its AQSIQ registration requirements.

Just as the ability of some individuals to reveal "too much information" about their personal lives can make the rest of us squeamish, so too scrap recyclers feel a little uneasy disclosing these types of details.

Business owners can have very few tangible assets that provide an edge in a global economy that is increasingly driven by striving to be the lowest cost producer. The know-how to set up an efficient production facility that squeezes out a great deal of product with less labor and fewer bottlenecks is thus rightly considered an advantage to a successful scrap recycler.

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It can be worrisome enough to disclose what may amount to competitive advantages to one’s own government, or even to an ISO auditor. To present such information to a foreign government provides yet one additional cause for concern, as there is probably little recourse if the information is shared or passed along once it arrives overseas.

The global economy has changed the way business owners must think and operate, and the 17 forms that AQSIQ is asking scrap exporters to complete (in Chinese, it should be noted) could be considered an indicator of how the dynamic is beginning to shift in the global trading community.