Systems Founded in Byproduct Management: Ingenuity 101

Lucid Energy, Stormwater X, Toilet 3.0, and Africa's Tech Sector and Scrap Sector might solve 4 problems with byproduct management.

If you are an agent of conscience, and choose to either be perfect, or become someone guided by perfect intent, you need maintenance. Like a regular teeth-cleaning or oil change, you need to regularly evaluate your interior motives, your pridefulness, your righteous indignation, and cognitive biases.  Preemium primum non nocere.

Like a machine that has been well maintained, you will, through the cumulative exposure and effort towards the improvements you've devoted yourselves to, be in the right place when the right time for an insight, inspiration, or opportunity occurs. If, for example, you care about people living in slums in emerging markets, you might spend years doing Mother Theresa one-on-several assistance, and begin to be inured to the scale of the problem. Keep your ego in check, and your eyes open, because someone else may have a good idea and never have your insight into an application that would "save the world", or your piece of it.

Where is this going? Downhill to the problem, whose byproduct is opportunity

Cross Culture 3: Domestic Disputes in African Forestry

The Politics of Deforestation in Africa: Madagascar, Tanzania, and Uganda [Foreign Affairs]... Nadia talks about important environmental issue with permanent consequences, and whether third-party international assistance will be effective.

Middlebury professor Dr. Nadia Horning (one of the hosts of the kickoff session at Fair Trade Recycling Summit in 2013) is on of the few people talking about something important in African resource policy.

Extraction is more crucial than discard, and the most important aspect of waste is whether it influences extraction. This paper discusses the intentions and effects of external solution making.

It's a Domestic Dispute with International and Inter-generational consequences.  Plastic litter will kill a lot of individual creatures that we can see close up, but destroying and cutting road-threads through an entire habitat exposes, degrades, and destroys the entire forest system.

We feel guilt about waste like we feel guilt about negligence.

We feel guilt about consumption in a scarier way.

We feel guilt about domestic violence against a woman in a neighbor's apartment in another way.

How we need to take action, as agents of conscience, demands a little more study than we like to put in. But we at least need to agree to purge the airwaves of uncredible and false accusations.

FALSE CLAIMS

Deauville Prizewinning Documentary to Air at Conference

This is a trailer for a 50 Minute Documentary called "Blame Game" produced by Sideways team in Spain this year.

The producer and filmmaker interviewed Joseph "Hurricane" Benson after he received a 5 year sentence for allegedly shipping TVs - which he bought, and could recycle for free in the UK - to Ghana, during "Project Eden".


Clean Hands Teaser from Clean_Hands on Vimeo.

If anyone wants to interview the filmmakers, I can get you in touch.

Cross Cultural Training in Ewaste #2: IRS FORM 13909

Two NGOs take opposing positions on trade w/ "Third world" aka "emerging markets". What's Tech? What's Scrap? Who decides? Which is a "watchdog"? Which is registered as a "charity"? Who beats up other non-profits?


Ten years ago, the mission of WR3A.org dba Fair Trade Recycling was to vet exporters. And by that we meant to identify USA companies it was safe to export FROM, and not foreign companies it was safe to export TO.

To me, it's an amazingly simple explanation, but it takes weeks sometimes to get it through to journalists and documentary makers.

If you begin with the assumption that the Tech Sector in an emerging market enlists the very best and brightest, the valedictorians, and assume they are flying to purchase something from the Scrap Sector in the wealthy nation - as I did - then the purpose of a civil contract between the two parties is to increase efficient and fair trade.

Earlier this decade [post WR3A California Compromise] we realized that before we could broker loads, we had to first serve the Tech Sector by advocating on their behalf against a very strongly funded defamation campaign. To complicate matters, that campaign was being promoted by "the Left", people who were quite self-certain that they didn't have a single racist idea in their minds.  People who championed "environmental justice" were in fact committing "environmental malpractice", but that was a hard message to deliver.



If I can't fundraise to pay the WR3A credit card bills, maybe we can do the next best thing and "level the playing field". Basel Action Network is registered as a 501-c(3) charity - an organization that attests it does not advocate for legislation, does not perform work to benefit any private business or organization, and provides charitable services.  If reporters are looking for a story, we got another one for you....

Cross Cultural Training Program for Ewaste Shockumentary Makers 1

This week I spent another several hours in a pre-interview for a German documentary crew from ZDF. They had seen Blame Game or seen the blog, and said that they were reaching out to see if we can get them interviews with Africans in the Tech Sector --- "At Agbogbloshie".

spend more time at the beach guys

They are attending something called the Digital Conference Republica [technovagh blog by
Joseph-Albert Kuuire], a German conference established 2013 on the subject using online information to solve global problems, to be held in Accra for the first time.

Obviously these dudes mean well. But finding a repair tech "At Agbogbloshie" is a bit like finding a mechanic at your local scrap metal yard. They are associating the original stubborn idea that imports arrive directly at Agbogbloshie (thanks to Jim Puckett and Mike Anane) with the message that Africans import what they can repair.

So in my next blog, I'm going to share some of the training and background information which we tried to impart to Alexander Glodsinksi of SDF, in a crash course via Whatsapp, with Emmanuel Nyalete, Evans Quaye, Wahab Odoi, and Olu Orga.  After the "text training", Evans suggested we put it up on a website devoted to Africa's Tech Sector. Let's start here.

Regulatory Gymnastics: Officials' Time Out for Recycling Waste Offset

Hey, just a quick note to those of you who have been asking what the latest is with the Fair Trade Recycling Offsets.  I remain really excited about this.  But we had a little setback which has stalled the project.

Here's the history, the latest roadblock in RED.

1. Fair Trade Recycling started with Purchase Orders and Fair Trade Contracts.  When we wrote down what overseas buyers DID NOT ACCEPT, it became pretty clear very quickly that they were not buying stuff to burn it or to operate a "Pollution Haven".  Someone paying us 10 times more for a CRT than it's worth in scrap, but paying ZERO for the same make and model which has damage (disqualifying it from the purchase order) is presumed to be a good actor.

regulatory gymnastics (Labadi Beach Accra, Ghana)

For Thankgiving 2018: Yes, You Are Probably Better Off Than Your Parents*

On social media, I sometimes try to "referee the internet".  That's what I call engaging in political debate or argument. I like dialectic. Constructive argument is better than smile-and-wave, or sweep-under-the-rug, etc. If you have the right touch, the friendship survives.

One of the arguments that is ongoing is over the pessimism vs. optimism for globalisation.

Other species, and the environment, I'm tragically not optimistic about.  My optimism about human lives is actually, in part, to get us to focus on worrying about things that really matter.  Also, I think that unnecessary panic and pessimism, whether to Trump or Bernie, distracts us from making investments that might really matter.

So here goes. When we look at an optimistic video, like GapMinder (Hans Rosling), about more girls going to school, fewer diseases, less poverty, the statistics and facts are clear.  Here is an interesting graphic - The World Poverty Clock.

57,913 people escaped poverty today (income levels increased)
11,508 people fell into poverty (especially in places like Venezuela, Nigeria, Syria and Yemen)

World Poverty Clock Screenshot

The graphic shows red (newly poor) and black (newly rich) stick figures, and shows countries in red or black according to how their own population is faring.  I have some funnier videos at bottom.

Here's the argument people most often push back. Many people believe that the current generation of AMERICANS or EUROPEANS is less likely to be better off than their parents generation.

But there are two ways to pose the question. Are we living better than a previous generation? And if so, how did we afford it?

Blogger V. Twitter - Recycling News Happens Fast [StormX]

There are two reasons why the number of Good Point Ideas blog posts has declined in the past 24 months.

The first relates to an increase in use of Twitter. As I noted 5 years ago, Twitter is misunderstood as a "squawking box". Sure, there's lots of inane squawking on Twitter. But the most important thing on the Twitter site is in the top right hand... the Search Box.

"Following" a thousand people is pretty impossible. I trim it down with a FairTradeRecycling list of twitter posters I follow more closely. But it is the "saved search term" feature that we need to pay attention to. It allows you to get an early scoop... and if it turns out to be clickbait, it's only 160 characters or whatever.

So ten years ago, the incredible idea below would have been subject of a blog, which would take me 45 minutes to write (and if readers are lucky, another hour to re-edit).  Now I post it bam on Twitter.

Storm Water Trash Catch Nets

I saw this on a repost from an old pal Wim Roskam on Facebook, who in turn found it on Architecture and Designs rather cool Facebook page.  The problem with stormwater carried litter is obvious if you've been to an African city like Accra, Lagos, Dakar or Douala.  The litter on the beaches is depressing and ubiquitous, and no amount of white savior plastic straw abstinence is going to save the sea creatures there.

STORMX is the license holder (image above is from North American licensee StormWaterSystems.com). The net baggies allow water to run through, but catch the debris... which is the actual culprit of urban flooding - falsely blamed on scrappers of Agbogbloshie 40 months ago. 2015 was the same year that Twitter helped a youtube video of a turtle with a straw stuck in its nose go viral... which led to a LOT of journalist ink going into the plastic straw bans.

10 Things we Know about Basel Action Network's "Earth Eye", and 1 We Don't

1. We know BAN is not placing GPS trackers into any devices that don't LOOK ready to reuse. Not a single CRT or projection TV (over 50% of ewaste) was tracked by BAN, ever.
2. We know BAN claims to be "cutting wires" to sabotage the devices, which likely get repaired anyway.
3. We know that BAN controls distribution of who gets what type of device... 14% of all GPS trackers BAN released in Canada went to one guy who had a lawsuit vs. BAN.
4. We know BAN has a financial interest in the outcome (through E-Stewards) worth millions of dollars.
5. We know that BAN's press releases interchange their proposed "Ban Amendment", which has not passed, for Basel Convention international law, which allows export for legitimate recycling and repair.
6. We know that BAN mysteriously "obfuscated" several end points in Asia, when devices arrived at legitimate reuse and legal recycling centers.
7. We know that BAN picks specific people to accuse, even in cases when that person exported nothing.
8. We know that BAN profiles the overseas tech sector and reuse technicians as "primitive" and "informal".
9. We know that the "developing nations" BAN describes as "primitive" had cities with TV stations and millions of households using electricity a half century ago, and produce most of the "ewaste" at their own dumps.
10. We know that the first instance of GPS tracking, of TVs sold to Nigerian born TV-repairman Joseph Benson of BJ Electronics, led to false testimony ("80% not reused") by the UK prosecutor, and environmental injustice (imprisonment of Benson).

What I can't figure out is why the press gives this organization any ink.

Follow the money. 

This is the To Kill a Mockingbird moment for the environmental community. You either sat by while this NGO made this happen, or you spoke up to #freejoebenson

The Privilege of Being Offended by Appropriation

Living in Vermont, with a wife teaching at Middlebury, and three college kids, I am very aware of political correctness, privilege, and offense.  The "victimhood jujitsu", where something you say or hear puts you or someone else off-balance. The passive aggression, finding subliminal intent where none was on the sayer's mind.

Not that I hold the conservative view... just addressing the educational tactic of reverse-labelling.

Worn to my first recycling job interview

PC culture may be a good thing or a bad thing. But political correctness may have unintended consequences when it emboldens a type of anti-bully, a Madame LaFarge, to call out privileged people for oblique intent. Indeed, some of the political right of Brietbart give credit to liberal college shaming to emboldening them. Like in jujitsu, the left shifts its body weight to anticipate the right's weakness, and the right re-leverages its body weight to counter.

Like sloshing in a bathtub, this kind of immature discussion makes a mess.

Insecurity about our inherited history can cause us to project insecurity onto others. It bears a lesson most societies have taught us to resist.

Panel Discussion - How to Address 4 Weaknesses as a Business Owner

In a couple of hours, I will be sitting on a panel at the 2018 Electronics Reuse Conference. Topic - How to Address Weaknesses as a Business Owner - was the first to tempt me for 5 years.

Good Point Recycling opened in April 2001.  I bought a used truck with a $15k bathroom improvement budget, and didn't hire the first full time employee for 3 years. The first 3 years, I was mostly doing consulting gigs between truck runs. If your weakness is "talking too much", charge by the hour.

I used to speak at conferences pretty often 20 years ago, 15, 10 years ago. But one of the weaknesses I found that we all have is this - speaking to your peers, to other businesspeople, to competitors, etc, sucks. We are all weak when our audience consists of people who know or think they know as much as we do. If they agree, then they sat in a session to hear the obvious. If they disagree, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."  Generally, don't do it. I generally try to refer invitations to WR3A to Tech Sector people from Mexico, Ghana, Malaysia, etc, who really can tell an American audience something they don't know.

This topic, however, is about weaknesses. About addressing my own weaknesses. So I accepted. It should be an opportunity to self-deprecate and tell some funny stories about near-death experiences.
I'll start by acknowledging my survival. We will have a moment of silence for some late, great, fates.  In alphabetical order, here is a list of companies which I'm pretty sure were at one point part of the 10 largest electronics recyclers in the world (or claimed to so be).

Allied - 2006
DMC - 2006
HMR - 2006
Creative - 2014
CRTR - 2015
Eco International - 2013
EWSI / 2TRG / CLRR - 2016
Intercon Solutions - 2013
MPC - 2015
WeRecycle - 2015

Right To Repair in Nashville: Red Light, Green Light, Purple Light

Here in Nashville for Electronics Reuse Conference.  Formerly the TechSoup conference, which had mostly NGOs engaged in the Digital Divide, the conference is now managed by a private Chicago company. I was proud to receive a "Jim Lynch Lifetime Achievement Award" last year, when the conference was in New Orleans. Jim Lynch himself nominated me - and said he had done so every year since the award was established in his name, a something that really touches me.

Jim and I shared a 5 hour drive from the Retroworks de Mexico plant in Fronteras, Sonora, a few years ago. We shared a rather romanticized concept of India in our youth.  I didn't go there to meditate, as Jim did for a year.  Perhaps because when I said I intended to, my chum Sri Chatrathi from Fayetteville High School remarked "Go smoke pot in your own country, we don't need any more white hippies in India."

This week, Nashville is about the Right to Repair. A lot has been happening, and more of us are realizing that a Right To Repair is simply an invitation to Manufacturers to restrain their own speed. Once the government has a chair at the table, look what happens.

Feds say Hacking DRM to fix your owned phone is LEGAL.

Consumer Reports Magazine covers this as well.

The Spiraling Economy: Double Regulations of A Circular Economy

Here is the recycler's recurring nightmare...

"We'd love to keep using 1,000 tons per day of your recycled material instead of mining and extracting it from forests and mountains. But EPA says we'd need a Waste Facility Perimit in addition to our clean air and water permits.  If we mine from the mountain, we just need 2 permits, not 3"

No good deed goes unpunished. Regulators of city waste insist on tracking processed recyclables in the industrial mineral market, even when they compete as "furnace ready" feedstocks with materials mined from mountainsides.



The best hard rock mining is worse than the worst recycling. And this week, the Wall Street Journal's reporters Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin and Joe Parkinson show us what some of the worst (gold) mining looks like.

Poison Apples 4: BAN Report on Canadian Export - 9% Export Despite Rigged Sampling!

Nine Percent!?!?

Nine Percent is a nine-member Chinese boy group formed by the survival show Idol Producer by iQiyi in 2018.

Nine percent is also the result of BAN's E-Stewards new report  on a rigged process to show illegal ewaste export is still a thing to pay them money about.

Rigged as in 14% of all the devices BAN tracked were sent to one company (which BAN has engaged in a lawsuit against). And BAN didn't track things they knew would not likely be exported.

Basel Action Network, the owner of the "E-Stewards" authority program, is still using GPS trackers to try to ramp up business.  In a new report distributed by email, BAN has given a subject headline that "Canada still Exporting e-Waste to Developing Countries"... Using a clever but well trod journalism trick, "still" is meant to imply something significant is contained in the report.

Let's boil the information down from page 1.

1) Zero CRT televisions tracked, despite being 60% of Canada's e-waste stream.  That's a major sampling bias if your claim is about "Canadian e-Waste".

2) The devices "chosen" for export tracking - LCD monitors, CRT desktop monitors, and printers - were identified in BAN's 2016 report as the most likely items purchased by export markets.

3) BAN "Poisons the Apples" again, claiming to have secretly "rendered the devices economically unrepairable".  Like the 2016 report, the sabotage is not visible, it's hidden (and not competently done - in 2016 several devices were found repaired and in use anyway). Why do that, other than defeat screening and quality control procedures by the accused Canadian exporter?

4) BAN again conflates the Basel Convention - which explicitly allows reuse and repair and even recycling exports to developing countries - with their proposed AMENDMENT, which they admit has not been passed or ratified by either the Convention or Canada. So their claims of "illegal" activity by Canadians are clearly false and defamatory.

Despite all this spin, the result of the GPS study is   9 %

And if CRT TVs had been tracked, it would have been less than 3 percent!!!  This report shows an NGO flailing its fingers on the keyboard!!!

Poison Apples 3: Uptick in Lithium Battery Fires & GPS Ewaste Tracking Devices

Our company sends about 30% of the used electronics we receive to "big shred"... companies that invested in labor-saving mechanical shredders with eddy-current-separators, magnets, optic sorters, etc., to turn things like printers (notoriously low reuse value because the dollars are in the ink cartridges, not the device) into streams of raw material.

Those shredding companies are our friends.

We offer to take back stuff they can't shred responsibly - like display devices.  Ideally, we'd be taking back, ton-for-ton, the 30% stuff that should be hand-managed, like CRTs and LCDs, Plasmas, OLEDs, etc, for every ton of shreddable e-waste we send.

Our friends at the shredders have a problem. One friend, ECS of California, went out of business this year. I've known the owner, Jim Taggart, since my Massachusetts DEP days in the 1990s. He was not the first "big shred" investor to get sucked  under.

This video doesn't show you any specifics about why, but it does show a big, big problem for Big Shred.  It features our old pal Scott Pelly of CBS 60 Minutes (the guy who impugned our geek pals based on Jim Puckett ewaste statistic "fakenews").

Poison Apples 2: Profiting from Ewaste Cures

Things that seemed very important to write about 6 years ago (about things like desktop CRT monitor remanufacturing in Asia, and California SB20) now seem less vital.  But while public discussion of the topics in this blog has quieted, and some wins (like Mr. "Fishing as a Boy" Anane being actively edited out of certain documentaries) institutionalized, individual cases of racial profiling of the emerging market's tech sector continue. I receive a lot of thank yous "under the table".

What I have learned over the 11 years of writing this blog is that being passionate about environmentalism is like being passionate about cures for human sickness and disease. It is a hot topic until the disease is cured, but that different populations struggle with different levels of risk.

And the importance of being green is not passeé.  The theme is to improve environmental health the way we improved human health. Sometimes, that means standing up to the liar wearing the doctor's white coat, promising to end suffering by selling a cure they've barely tested....

E-Waste Policy looks a great deal, through the lens of history, like 1960s infant formula sales.  My mom recently recalled that when she was breastfeeding me at the hospital in Harrison Arkansas in 1962, a nurse in the room asked her, "What are you trying to prove?"  Mom was only 19... but thank god she could see past the nurse's labcoat.

Poison Apples Blog: 18 Questions for Research on GPS Tracking of E-Waste

Poison Apples Blog #1 - Labor Day Weekend 2018

It's September, the beginning of a new Academic Year.  Environmental studies and public policy and geography and business majors are arriving on campus, ready to launch hundreds of term papers, thesis, class essays, etc. on lots of topics.

Usually, there are dozens of students researching the topics of the Basel Convention, EPA policy, exports, and externalization of pollution.  And there are quite a few papers that will be written on racial profiling, and environmental justice.

So far, I haven't seen many papers on the thesis that Geeks of Color, the Tech Sector in emerging markets, is being improperly profiled as "primitive", "informal", and "illegal". But if I were to write such a paper, for an A+, I might begin with another paper that had been published that reached a conclusion in its title...

"How does e-waste travel across the world after disposal?" was a hot publication in 2016, and was covered on PBS national evening news broadcast before many of us had a chance to peer-review it. The title of the report asks a question... and has a cover photo at top which clearly shows the plastic casings of CRT televisions.  This raised a question to me... why was there not even a single CRT television tracked among the sample of 205 devices, which MIT's partner claims are a representative sample of "ewaste".

The 30% or so of "stuff" in e-waste collections that does indeed "travel across the world" is the only stuff they tracked. But the paper claims to answers the question "How" without asking the question, "Why"?  And the answer to why would come from the buyers, the black, brown, Asian, African, Latino and Islanders who are never offered a chance to show what they CAN do with your "elective upgraded" so-called "waste"...

Because the NGO knows this, they had to take an extra step. No one is selling spoiled apples in the marketplace, if they tracked the spoiled ones, it would show little export. But if they tracked the statistically good ones, they'd likely find their GPS in a reuse shop (in fact, they did despite efforts to sabotage).

The method, I call "poisoning the Apples"... And its time some people publish some term papers on the obvious errors in scientific method that should have been vetted before PBS was sent the paper.

The Thorny Distraction of Environmental Police / Malaysia Rhino Horn

It has been a couple of years now since WR3A's last meeting with INTERPOL in Lyon, France. After our first and second visit to Agbogbloshie, laughingling labelled the "world's largest e-waste dump", INTERPOL officials let me know that "Project Eden" was a misfire. They would sunset it silently.  This is what grown up environmentalists do.

The #ewastehoax launched by Jim Puckett of Seattle almost two decades ago has distracted environmental regulators, and has diluted their enforcement, from much more important concerns.  Like this.

Fifty rhino horns, worth $12M, seized by Malaysian environmental officials in Kuala Lumpur. This is a big news story. Yet it's been distracted from and diluted by Basel Action Network, and there's been no country more so distracted by BAN's war on repair than Malaysia DOE.

Everyone Misunderstands China / Global Recycling Chains (#WSJ)

Wall Street Journal and others are running stories about the crash in recycling prices due to China's new import restrictions.  There is a grain of truth to the story, but there is so much more going on that I have to issue a quick explanation [US Recycling Companies Face Upheaval from China Scrap Ban].

It has little to do with the sentiment in China over "western garbage". That trite little meme is everywhere on Twitter.  It's something else entirely.

"IT'S THE MINING STUPID"

(AND FORESTRY, OCEAN BED EXTRACTION, AND CRUDE OIL REFINING)

Nuance Delivery 4: Correcting Our Aim

Having trouble with the video editing software to get Oluu Orga's excellent video-bio on his years in Agbogbloshie up for view.  I had been using Picasa for the previous videos I edited. Alphabet (Google) is kind of the popular boyfriend/girlfriend that only dates you for a couple of years and then loses interest... Love their free products but they wind up dropping support and pulling the plug-ins.

While I keep working on it, I'm also getting ready to receive a bunch of African Fair Trade Recycling members. Wahab "Ghana Tech" is arriving in Boston. Emmanuel Nyaletey arrives tomorrow from Georgia Tech. Evans Quaye of Accra is networking in South Africa.  Web Element is completing their Fair Trade Recycling Waste Offset (re-export) paperwork at Ghana EPA. Our newest Fair Trade Recycling staffer, John Sumani of Wa (far Northwest), a Ph.D in environmental studies, has a good network at Ghana EPA. The Techs of Chendiba Enterprises check in politely now and then. And the "three musketeers of Agbo", Awal, Yaro and Razak, have their Whatsapp credits ready to spend (at all hours of day and night).

Nuance Delivery 3: Eyewitnesses To Hell - Oluu Orga

The Agbogbloshie waste site has really become a crucible for examination of the charitable industrial complex. The richer the African city, the more consumer electronic waste it generates.  When I go to Agbogbloshie, I don't see anything I didn't see in Mobile, Alabama.

But once, I thought did.  When Westerners go to unfamiliar places, something happens. We photograph something that seems exotic, and the more shocking and unfamiliar, the more valuable the photo.  It's interesting to contrast our Western photos of Agbogbloshie to those taken by an African who lived and worked at the place. Western photojournalists (e.g. Kevin McElvaney) earn a better living selling their photos if there's a nice Biblical Halloween Titled Hyperbole around them.

In Nuance 1 and 2, we focused again on Awal Muhammed of Savelugu, Ghana, the guy in his mid-20s who figured out that adding more gasoline - literally - to the ewaste (and tires, mostly) burning fire was a recipe for handouts. On my first visit to Agbo in 2015, he certainly stood out. (And he video calls me too often ever since, see last night).

Today, let's focus on an authority, Oluu Orga, who is everything Awal is not. He also came to Agbogbloshie from the North, he also pushed a cart around the city, but he didn't ever learn to perform fire tricks for the Photojournalist convention (which started in earnest a year after Oluu left).

Oluu Orga didn't have much to spend on film, but he took pictures of his friends doing different jobs.

In the mid 1980s, I returned from 30 months in Africa with 7 undeveloped rolls of film. When they were all developed at once, I could see where my priorities had been.  Excited to be in remote Africa, the place I had heard about as primitive and natural and exotic.. many photos apparently were intended to "validate" my time there. More shots of grass roofs than corrugated steel, no pictures of paved roads.  When I went through Oluu's photos of his time there, Agbogbloshie finally got real.

Nuance Delivery 2: Awal is BlackboxMedia's Tire Burning Boy

Well, I was working on a different Nuance #2 - the upcoming release of Juan Solera / Palm and Play's documentary "Blame Game" (former working title Clean Hands).

But before I could make an announcement, another German White Savior documentary has just been released!  "Welcome to Sodom" makes Awal Muhammed (and perhaps fellow Musketeers Yaro and Razak? Didn't see them in the trailer) return for another one of his tire-burning-circus acts.

In fairness, I have only been able to see the trailer.  But hey, here's the same theme.  Agbogbloshie in Ghana is presented as "Europe's Ewaste Dump". Shots of girls with water baskets on their heads. Shots of garbage being dumped (not even electronics) through a frame of a 1970 television husk.  But if the trailer and website is any indication, our hero is, once again, Awal Muhammed of Savelugu (north of Tamale) Ghana.

Here he is with his gasoline-filled-tire-burning-act (previously seen on Placebo's MTV video last year).  This is not something they do - use this much fuel to make this big a fire - except when European camerapeople are present. Awal is credited with figuring out that it's the fire that brings the cameras for your close up (a hint for Hollywood Extra Wannabees, perhaps).

Nuance Delivery 1: Awal is Sasha Rainbow's Tire Burning Boy

Another reminder from the Placebo "Life's What You Make It" controversy a year ago... Sasha Rainbow, who made the Placebo music video in Agbogbloshie, didn't ever - even once- respond to me or talk to me.  She said I was a liar.



Here (in Pidgin English) is an interview with Awal Muhammed of Savelugu (village north of Tamale).  Oh, he's also featured in BBC reporter Reggie Yates feature on Agbogbloshie.

Sasha's documentary is coming out soon, I've been told.  Good for her that she spent more time down there.  I've heard nice things about Sasha Rainbow from people I know in Accra. 

Trying to be Logically Hyper-Empathetic

Being logically hyper-empathetic (able to consider any point of view as a puzzle to how a reasonable person could hold that view) has ups and downs. 

Being able to imagine my hardest opponents as NOT Nazis, NOT Spoiled, NOT Privileged, NOT labels of the worst possible assumption, has helped me sharpen my own views. But surprisingly, it does not appear to make me more persuasive. 

NGO "#EarthEye" Gets OEM Cash for GPS Trackers: Do It Right Dell

Summary:  We applaud the next generation GPS Tracking study - if it's a truly random distribution and random sampling of end points.  It's not the tracking that was bad in 2016, it was the opportunity for bias distribution and biased sampling of end points.  Dell should ask MIT Ethics Review Panel (via legal department) how to do a reputable GPS used electronics tracking study.

1. Randomly track and place all used electronics inputs. That means putting some trackers in 25 year old CRT TV junk that no one imports, some in working product that should be reused, not selectively sabotaging good enough looking stuff internally. 
2.  Randomly distribute the randomly selected used electronics. That means blindly send the goods so you don't send specific selected stuff to a specific recycler.  
3.  Randomly select end point export markets. That means you don't "obscure" good repair markets (cringeworthy 2016 study hid best and brightest in Hong Kong). 

What Dell can Learn from MIT Senseable City Lab "Partnership" with Basel Action Network.

In 2016, Basel Action Network sent GPS Trackers out in the field and provided MIT with a textbook study of how to do it wrong.  Sampling bias, financially involved research team, etc.

In 2018, BAN has announced they have a new partner - Dell.  Above the fold are the steps Dell can take to avoid MIT's mistakes, and do this study right.  I will applaud the tracking if the samples are done fairly, because then they will tell just as many stories about good Tech Sector outcomes overseas, as well as good stuff that got destroyed - not just bad stuff that didn't get fixed.  I'm all for science.

2010 Flashback to Europe's Decade of Racial Profiling E-Waste

Back in November 2010, I used a cover photo on a blog to convey how Europe was relying on photojournalism to set waste policy. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG was one of my most visited blogs that year - the year Interpol launched "Project Eden", an approach to Africa and Asian geeks that was as cringeworthy as the Eurotrash Art.

Grasping At Straws: The Net Liability of Extraction

Let's assume that people without a sense of environmental conscience don't spend time on this blog. Longtime readers know that I'm in recycling because of "religious" or "philosophical" experiences I had in the 1970s. In distilling the ethos of hippies and hillbillies (elderly god-fearing folks I also admire), I might have coined a term "Agent of Conscience".

Time to "recalculate the route" of environmental strategy. We know that we need people who care, and we know that it needs to be science based. We hope to develop cures for planet health the way western medicine cured smallpox and polio. And borrowing from the March of Dimes polio strategy, we aren't above using poster children if the timing is right.

First, we need a personal end point or destination, a true north. At least, that's where I started. Without history and accountability and scientific method, Environmentalists will be left Grasping for Straws.  In the big math, the net cost of extraction vs. reuse/repair/recycling, finding novel things to make people to feel guilty about isn't going to get us to our sustainable destination.

Grasping at Straws.... 

Rumors Update 3: Deauville, Normandy, Film Festival

This is just a sneak peak. Leapfrogs #2 because it's so hot off the press...




The collateral damage to geeks of color over the past 2 decades has left scores of witnesses.

Breaking: Raid on Thailand's Largest Used Flat Monitor Reuse/Recycling Operation

Hopefully non-Facebook viewers can see the CarmaFi LIVE from Bright TV in Thailand, I am looking for other hosts (Youtube).


This is fascinating because it's very rare to have 60 minutes of live video of an Asian E-waste recycling and refurbishing facility.  I was aware that Thailand has become the largest buyer of desktop LCDs, and as my company expands its own USA flat TV recycling operation, I confess I was worried this would be our competition.

https://www.facebook.com/BrightTV20/videos/2143410722606242/

Wow. I see things that look really bad. I see things that look really good.  I see modern air separation equipment, and I see Asian women sorting things on the table, and men sorting things on the floor. Lots of green circuit boards. I don't see any smoke or acid (promised by BAN).  I see aluminum heat sinks being sorted for reuse. I see downdraft tables where chips are being pulled and sorted from circuit boards for reuse.  I see 50 tubs with 50 different grades of copper.

The dreaded aluminum heat sink sorting table

Basel Action Network has pronounced judgement, of course. And I have to reserve judgement - even BAN isn't wrong all of the time. But they (BAN) sure do make it hard to see people for what they can do, positively, when they introduce them as "primitives" and "polluters".  I am just watching this video for the first time, and hope to learn what these processes are.  My hunch is that it is environmentally safer than mining, refining, and new manufacturing.  But that could be my own bias.

Bias is not all bad. My pre-disposition is largely framed by my knowledge of the complete history of electronic displays, from blinking-lights to tab cards to VGA, SVGA, digital, etc. I learned most of this from a guy who arrived as a child in Tawain during Mao's takeover of PRC, who wore rice sacks as clothes, but went to engineering school in Taipei... where he developed the first-ever display of Chinese characters on a CRT electron gun screen.

Rumors Updated Part 1: Status of the Joe "Hurricane" Benson E-Waste Witchhunt

Finally getting ready to release some major developments in the case of Joseph "Hurricane" Benson, who was first interviewed for THIS BLOG back in 2013.  Unconfirmed rumors are that Benson was released some time ago, on a condition that he not speak to the press.

Benson's Ewaste Export case was profiled a series of blogs, Titled BULLYBOYS.



The term "BULLYBOYS" was Joe Benson's.  His friends, Jacques and Amadou, had contacted me through the blog. They arranged a meetings - before he was sentenced to 5 years in prison by the United Kingdom.

Combat and Competition and Hope in Age of Universal Electronic Social Media (Thesis)

[Due to a sacroiliac injury and siatic nerve pain it has been several weeks since I've had good REM sleep.  This has made it difficult for me to concentrate and finish longer blogs, and I've turned to shorter statements via Twitter and news content.  Got some different nerve meds and had a long vivid dream last night.  Woke up with these thoughts, which I want to record in over 280 characters]

Universal Electronic Social Media [notification beeps on Facebook comments, or prolonged internet time on Reddit, etc] has created an impression of increasing conflict.  A lot of pundits are concluding that the internet is becoming more hostile, people less reserved or nuanced in their commentary -- or withdrawing altogether, or reserving comment for tighter social circles with less conflict (but also less exposure to genuine dialectic disagreement).

Better Solution to Eric Lundgren's Microsoft Operating System Reload: Spare Tire Licenses

Multiple pals on Facebook and Email sent me last weekend's article about Eric Lundgren, spectacled and lightly bearded electronics reuse guru.  Friend of Kyle at IFIXIT and other TechSoup sorts, Lundgren has made a colorful career doing press-catchy projects, like building electric cars out of e-waste, and other tinkerer tricks.

I have nothing against Eric and think it sucks he has been sentenced to jail for importing Microsoft Operating System licenses from China.  Whether he was going to give them away to poor people without computers, or sell them (as alleged by Microsoft and FBI informants), jail seems like overkill.  Here was Microsoft's side of the story, which sounds truthy as well.  And here is the view at IFIXIT.

Oh, and here is the petition circulated by PIRG... with a photo at the top looking very Agbogbloshie-like (reminding us that PIRG and Greenpeace still have not corrected their 80-90% primitive ewaste export hoax that put #FREEJOEBENSON in prison for much longer than Eric Lundgren is scheduled to serve).

Ok, I can fix this.  Have been trying for 20 years.  Had the solution in 1998. Tried to implement it in Massachusetts.

Spoiler in yellow.  I solved this over a decade ago.  Why can't I get traction?

THE SOLUTION IS FOR GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONAL VOLUME PURCHASERS TO PROCURE ONE "SPARE TIRE" LICENSE ON EVERY PC THEY ORDER. 

THE "SPARE" LICENSE KEY WOULD BE GLUED ON THE BACK, AND USED FOR A CLEAN REINSTALL AFTER THE HARD DRIVE WAS WIPED.  

THIS WOULD ELIMINATE E-WASTE AND MAKE THE PCS AFFORDABLE.  

WHEN I PITCHED THE IDEA TO MICHAEL DELL IN AUSTIN TEXAS, HIS FOLKS ESTIMATED THEIR COST FOR SUCH A LICENSE WOULD BE ABOUT $1.   

I made a short career of this when another Operating System company, NewDeal Inc., hired me as a consultant to promote THEIR Operating System as the backup.  New Deal collapsed during the "dotcom" crash, and my Spare Tire licensing idea never got off the ground.

More about Lundgren's case and how OEM Operating licenses work below.  Wouldn't surprise me if that's Lundgren using Accra's slum as a backdrop.

Driverless Used Car and Electronics Imports to Africa

Follow up to the new "Driverless" UNU 2018 Person In Port Report


The headline, “Thousands of tons of e-waste shipped illegally to Nigeria inside used vehicles” was familiar. In my last blog, I gave readers "the fine print".

Almost everything documented by the 2018 UNU's "Person in the Port Project" (2018) report on used electronics imports to Nigeria corresponds with our 4 years of research in Ghana. Bottom line, the importers are presumed innocent. Most purchases are normal and good. The headline focuses on a statistic that 15,000 tons of 60,000 tons “didn’t work”. Put another way, 75% of the imported used electronics are fully functional. More importantly, the report tells us that of the 25% of electronics needing repair, Nigeria's Tech Sector is the best on earth at fixing them. 

"The high skill level of Nigeria’s refurbishing sector, with the ability to fix many technical defects in UEEE at reasonable service cost, also motivates importers to import both functioning and non-functioning electronic equipment to Nigeria." 

- 5.8.1 PIP Report 2018

The 2018 report avoids the “poverty porn” - pics of kids posed on old TVs, etc. - that marred its 2015 report. In almost every respect, the report shows a fairer image of Africa’s Tech Sector. And the most important concession Europe has now made is to concede the 2015 Report's KEY FINDING - motives of "drivers" to export "waste" - has been disproven. Joseph "Hurricane" Benson had no "driver" to put waste into his export containers. The only financial motive that can explain these shipments are intent to reuse and repair.

So the "driverless" waste export theory is busted. Let’s focus first on Ten Things the report gets right.

UNU Gets Closer To Ewaste Truth (B-): But it is LEGAL not ILLEGAL

I T    I S   L E G A L

See video of African Reuse

The "fine print" behind in the UNEP / UNU headline.  75% of the imported used electronics work, and are preferred by African consumers because they perform better than affordable new ones. Of the 25% that require repair, Nigeria's Tech Sector is the best on earth at repairing them. 

First the Good News about United Nations University's "Person in the Port Project" (2018).  "Assessing Import of Used Electrical and Electronic Equipment Into Nigeria"...

1. The 2018 PiP report avoids the pitfall of poverty porn  photos (its 2015 report was cringeworthy)
2. The report correctly describes the use of otherwise "unused space" in automobiles (West Africa's #1 used goods import) to move laptops, computers, and other household electronics (and clothes, and jacuzzis, etc).
3. They involved 2 African authors, Olusegun Odeyingbo (UNU), and Dr. Innocent Nnorom, BCCC Africa (along with Dr. Olmar Desozer of UNU - ViE SCYCLE)

For a really excellent description of what "drives" the export trade, see section 5.8.1 Economic Relevance of UEEE Trade, Refurbishment and Recycling (complete quote at bottom, in blue).

"The high skill level of Nigeria’s refurbishing sector, with the ability to fix many technical defects in UEEE at reasonable service cost, also motivates importers to import both functioning and non-functioning electronic equipment to Nigeria." 

Well done.

The problem is in the press release, and the headline.  They claim something that is rational and environmentally sound is nevertheless illegal.  And the press release (apparently written by a freaked out white Starbucks barista) calls for law enforcement... without quoting or interviewing the black people who loaded and unloaded the containers.

Africans are in control of this whole trade.  This report does a lot to document that, reversing the narrative that unethical OECD sham recyclers are responsible.

So it doesn't get an "F".  It correctly describes the loading and unloading, and the financial transactions.  Better dressed, better facts, and with credible African co-authors.  But where is the crime?  Where is the waste dumping?

Recalling Booker T. Washington - the report reads like a compromise.  It describes the good outcomes in Africa, but still extends a sturdy olive branch to the WEEE policy hawks who constantly impugn trade with geeks of color in rapidly emerging markets like Nigeria.  A sturdy branch for the European E-Wastes lynch mob, who continue hunting down African technicians.

Vermont #RightToRepair S.180 Bill - Wall Chargers, Ink Cartridges in Chamber 35

The session on Vermont S.180 was crammed into one hour and fifteen minutes. I sat on a cushioned wall shelf in chamber room number 35.  Twelve committee members and staff. Three witnesses in favor of the Right To Repair Bill (VPIRG's Dan Brown, EFF's Kit Walsh by phone, and Michael Duplessis, of SunCommon, Apple repair guru). I was a wallflower.

You wouldn't think that the most important e-waste legislation in the United States was being discussed here, unless you counted the manufacturing lobbyists.  Not that the 3 anti-S.180 witnesses were over the top. They'd travelled to talk against a bill that was already defanged. Neutered. Eviscerated.  VPIRG told me it was effectively killed in the previous chamber.

The remaining "debate" is whether the Vermont Legislature should even form a task force or committee to further review the Right To Repair.  The lobbyists were there to strongly advocate not to have any discussions about it.

A lobbyist for the medical equipment manufacturers seemed to insinuate that people could die if finely tuned medical instruments are improperly reused.  A lobbyist for farm equipment dealerships said the line had to be drawn below dealerships.  His members were currently satisfied. (One legislator correctly pointed out the Ag Dealerships were protected by similar legislation when manufacturers prevented them from servicing multiple brands some years ago.... the lobbyist nodded, yes, that's where to draw the line)


The strategy of industry in opposition to discussion of the Fair Repair Act is obfuscation.  They left the impression that the Task Force would have to cover a pandora's box of questions.  The House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development Chairman, Bill Botzow (D-Bennington), was genuinely daunted.  "Which bite of the cake do we eat first?"

How about the icing?   15 U.S.C. § 2301  Because this cake was already baked 40 years ago.  The debate was held between 1972 and 1975, all the cautions were weighed and balanced.  This is an act to establish a Task Force to review an old law and see how it can be updated.  Easy peasy...

Ask about the wall chargers.  Europe already passed rules making them universal, and no airplanes fell out of the sky.

By Evan-Amos - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16128583

CryptoCurrencyBall: Tinkerer's Blessing Moneyball Takes on E-Waste

The previous post basically took MIT SustainAble City Labs and E-Stewards to task for the ill-conceived GPS tracking study that succeeded, mostly, in elevating negative stereotypes about both scrappers and tech sector workers in emerging markets. 

Basel Action Network is trying to monetize tracking of unwitting, unwilling subjects.  I just hope MIT will eventually do the right thing and apologize for its role in using undergraduate students to place tracked devices, disguised as repairable (and in some cases WERE repaired), and associating legitimate overseas technicians with "rice paddies" and "shantytowns".

Now for the positive, forward looking alternative, the Fair Trade Recycling vision.

"Your goal shouldn't be to buy players. Your goal should be to buy wins... I believe there is a championship team that we can afford, because everyone else undervalues them." Peter Brand, Moneyball

We are working to fly 2 of the brightest LED/LCD/Plasma display techincians I have met in Ghana over the past 4 years to Middlebury, Vermont, to train and interract with Good Point Recycling staff. We sent 2 student interns to work with one of those technicians under the Fair Trade Recycling "e-Waste Ambassadors" program last summer (Middlebury College and U of Florida).

We are going to be card counters at the blackjack table...

And here is a paid Fair Trade Recycling Internship post to bring us there (please repost).

I call it CryptoCurrencyBall...

FRAMED: GPS Tracking System For Ca$h!! Non-Profit For Hire Egg Hunt!

[April 1, 2018] FRAMED:   "HOW TO" USE GPS TO MAKE SOMEONE LOOK BAD. 

Environmental NGO Basel Action Network released an Opinion piece in E-Scrap News that may have put too fine a point on their offer to shakedown competitors.

"Responsible recycling companies can be plagued with downstream vendors that cheat on their no-export commitments. For this reason, BAN encourages all electronics recyclers to contact BAN to privately contract for our tracking services. We are ready and willing to help all recyclers and enterprise companies to audit their downstream partners."

https://resource-recycling.com/e-scrap/2018/02/08/opinion-addressing-reactions-e-scrap-tracking/

"Responsible"... You'll be "responsible" all right.  Because if you read the agreement disclaimer, you'll find you could be held responsible if the NGO gets sued for defamation.

Here's our April Fool's Day Prank - How to use an MIT-inspired GPS tracker to make ANYONE look bad.  And the fun part is, you can do it for Ca$h!

Reversing ER#3: J-School Background Checks on E-Waste - Benson Released, Rowe Fired?

Here's an interesting statistic on "e-waste" (like most, made up on the spot).  Four out of five journalists who contact me beforehand decide not to run the story on "e-waste" at all.

Reporters are initially attracted to the Basel Action Network's press release or photo opportunity (exotic brown child perched on familiar looking old electronics).  That BAN press release has, for 15 years, triggered interest in reporters and college researchers. An easy story to write, as BAN served "facts" up on a platter.

But Jim Puckett is no Upton Sinclair. He wrote about Agbogbloshie in chilling text - before admitting to me he had never been there at all. He had never even read a peer reviewed article.

The "ewastehoax" says junk in cities across the globe is the fault of "sham recyclers"... if only we use a USA recycling company that pays dividends to Jim Puckett, we will quickly clean these places up.

The Ewastehoax promises a moral lesson of "environmental injustice", and triggers three Steven Pinker-esque cognitive biases:

1. Nurture. We actually care about the poor child.
2. Greed. We suspect someone else's actions were driven by it.
3. Fear.  We are afraid of our own liability for our "stuff".

It's an easy recipe.  BAN isn't the only organization to use it. Annie Leonard, Blacksmith Institute, StEP, R2 (SERI), E-Stewards, CBS 60 Minutes, The Guardian, etc. all followed the trail on these instincts.

If you are a good photographer, that is all you need to put some guy like Joseph "Hurricane" Benson of BJ Electronics behind prison bars.  You can be the reporter that made him sell his house, that cost him his business and his retirement.

You are so cool.  You no doubt picked up all kinds of dates interested in your brave reporting.  Did you tell them about Joe Benson, the Nigerian TV repairman who shipped a TV with a GPS tracker to Ghana? Did you describe the satisfaction of Benson going to jail, like Raphael Rowe of BBC's Panorama did?

Oh, wait.  News flash.  Raphael Rowe got fired? (According to this article, "Pushed Out", but there's still some uncertainty as I research this, he's still on BBC 2 local).  And Interpol has pulled the plug on Project Eden.  All since Fair Trade Recycling's 2015 trip to Agbogbloshie, where we saw a city slum near a dump full of tires, cars, and junk appliances - all once owned by Africans, from a thriving city of millions of consumers.  Even the dozens (not thousands) of (adult) orphans there all carry cell phones, and can send photos of where they collected the scrap... at Accra homes and businesses, which had millions of TVs in the mid 1990s.

Benson may have the last laugh on Raphael Rowe. Though he has suffered, journalism students once attracted to "environmental justice" stories are increasingly documenting "environmental malpractice", "friendly fire", and "collateral damage" to Africa's Tech Sector.

Whether or not Raphael Rowe stays on at BBC, he's still know for having been racially profiled.  As will be Joseph "Hurricane" Benson.  As Rowe said in an interview "bitterness never leaves you".

Dell Global Recycling Video by Von Wong, Theory of God

While I would love to sit down with Von Wong and correct some of his statistics about ewaste (to put a more heroic face on the overseas Tech Sector, described as "landfills across the globe" in the intro), I have to hand it to him, the artwork is great.



Can't resist sharing this.  Thanks to my pal in Malaysia, Nancy Poh, for sharing it.

But this is a two part blog. The next is about my theory of knowledge, and knowledge of God.