Right To Repair During Pandemic

This morning brings an astute opinion page article by Adam Minter of Bloomberg, about how we are more vulnerable today to anti-reuse and anti-repair (planned obsolescence) strategies today than we were a couple of months ago. Apple has closed its "authorized" repair hubs, and the crackdown on trade in Asia during the pandemic has made replacement devices much more difficult and timely to order.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-28/apple-s-rules-make-iphone-repairs-hard-to-get-amid-coronavirus?srnd=opinion

This excellently explained column may give Right To Repair legislation the push that it needs in Vermont. I will certainly be sending it to my legislators in Addison County.

Adam Minter is a swordfish - a reader who is interested in, understands, and re-conveys messages better and more broadly than you can. The meta-blogger should not be interested only in the number of readers (the most widely prescribed blogging strategy) or page rank, but in the ability to draw in a deeper intellectual with the capacity to make change. Of the three books of 1960 which influenced me deeply - To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper), Silent Spring (Carlson), and The Waste Makers (Packard) - the third is perhaps most under threat by big manufacturers. It is getting cut out of school books. More below on why that matters...

Fishing for Swordfish

(This blog is both about a personal history on the subject of interest - right to repair - and also a commentary on "meta-blogging" which is a strategy of writing dense blogs that attract fewer - but more influential - followers)

Fair Trade Recycling "EWaste Offset" Program: 8 Steps Forward, 3 Steps Back, 4 Marching in Place

We launched the FTR E-Waste Offset Program from Ghana, Africa, through this blog in 2017.  Time for an update on how the program evolved.

Briefly, here are highlights of our progress.

1) We initially had a firm quote from Camacho in Spain to take back full loads of CRT televisions, ones that had been imported in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, at an extremely competitive cost... under $5k including shipping. This would have been very easy to finance with the discounts on sale of current reuse shipments.

2) Camacho needed a letter from the Ghana EPA allowing the "waste" TVs to be shipped to Spain... a demand from the Spain EPA. Turns out that was foreshadowing friction with Spain EPA that would lead to Camacho closing their purchase orders not only for Africa, but for USA as well.

3) WR3A hired an intern from Antioch University in NH, John Sumani of Wa, north Ghana. Sumani was getting his Ph.D and had previously worked at Ghana EPA. It took him about 3 months to get the requested letter (working with WebElement, a formal sector recycler in Ghana). But by the time they got the letter, Camacho's offer had vanished.

continued...

Crass and Stupid Attack on Right to Repair: Jim Puckett

Just a reminder, Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network calls repair a "loophole" for waste exports.

He does not know anything about repair.

He knows FAR less than Joe Benson.

He wants white people to be in charge of what black people are allowed to buy.

Privilege.

Who was the liar - Joe Benson or Mike "Fishing as a Boy" Anane?

"Where is the proof? If you find a container where I load it, pay shipping duty, pass it through customs, and put it in a landfill, show me.  If you find I did that, put me in prison for 100 years. I will stay in prison for 100 years."

 "Ten years ago, this (Accra city dump since 1960s) was a beautiful paradise, where I was fishing and swimming as a boy".

Basel Action Network publishes and promotes lies aimed specifically and purposely at the repair sector, and gets big donations from manufacturers who oppose "market cannibalization" (sale of their own products in secondhand markets).

A year ago Jim Puckett re-promoted his filthy lies about Ghana's tech sector, in his self-penned false liar piece "A Place Called Away", where he unleashed INTERPOL upon Joseph "Hurricane" Benson, telling Europe that 80% of used electronics would not be repaired but burned by "thousands" of orphans.

It is a bigger lie than even Donald Trump can tell.  Why oh why does he get away with it?