Responsible Recycler's R2 Pledge Haiku

We need an audit
To prove we don't dump e-waste   

Recycle fairly.

Ultimately, the test of whether E-Stewards or R2 Certified Recyclers is the right guarantee will not depend on photos of children burning waste.  It will not depend a company's unwillingness to pay huge fees to a political group which defames the best and brightest nerds in the business.

ethical ewaste 

my dirty little secret
we traded with geeks.

The independent ANAB audits for both standards go through our books and records in grueling detail.  This is tiresome and unpleasant, but it's necessary.   If after all this effort, the clients fall for a marketing campaign by the people who sell their E-Steward certification for gross amounts of cash, both audits systems will suffer.

If the records of the E-Stewards and R2 audits are made public, we will see 

1. Who is just shredding everything and attacking reuse markets without bothering to supply "tested working" equipment?
2. Who is selling "tested working" as a one-party-declaration standard and does not have downstream records of the buyers, and is thereby supplying the exact same contract manufacturing markets I defend, which the Ayatollah of E-Waste says are nasty, polluting, primitives?

With all the data and records our auditors are reviewing, we have a huge opportunity to make this transparent and get to the bottom of the "ewaste controversy", and who has the most "dirty little secrets".  I will Pledge to release all of our records to an independent university research group.   I hope that E-Stewards will share their records as well, and then we will all see just what the ethical difference between E-Stewards and R2 Certified recyclers really is.

Ethical E-waste
Many important data
Who has been lying?

If E-Stewards marketing defames and injures our audited friends, who have spent thousands on ISO14001, ISO9000, insurance, safety, and downstream audits, we have a moral imperative to hit back... the geeks of color spent tremendous resources to be more transparent and to do their part to ensure "fair trade"... and they are being accused of poisoning children by someone who uses pictures of brown children as some kind of perverted racial evidence.   I have to do this, because R2 Solutions and EPA aren't defending their own standard.  If E-Stewards want to refuse to deal with black fixers and repairmen, that's ok, but don't claim to know my buyers.

Cards upon the table
"All right then I'll go to hell"
Prove my pollution


What the auditors will find, if they actually study the end market, is that the same Geeks, Nerds, and Techs of Color are buying the "tested working" as well, and electively upgrading the parts, generating the same part replacement which BAN says is horrific and cataclysmic pollution.

Cowards surround me
E-Steward, R2 Alike
Afraid to stand up.

We the audited, E-Steward and R2 alike, have got all this data, it's time to turn it over to universities to study this.  Let's go upstream and find the pollution.  Let's go downstream and find what happens to "tested working" fully functional equipment.  Let's open our doors and find out who is really selling fully functional equipment, and who is just throwing planned obsolescence equipment into a violent blender vaporizing parts and rare earth metals into dust.