As I wrap up the blogs for 2022, I wanted to share an alternative source of blog authorship - Artificial Intelligence. https://chat.openai.com/chat allows you to create an account and then, like a word transcribing program on steroids, the AI generates dramatically impressive text.
This morning I had to announce layoffs for 5-8 staff at Good Point Recycling in Middlebury Vermont. These will only affect Vermont employees, our Brockton MA facility, which does 95% of the recycling (not reuse) for our company is unaffected. Good Point has been threatened denial of payment and threat of environmental enforcement by Vermont's Agency of Natural Resources. The "crime" is removing T-con boards for reuse, and hard drives for recycling and data security, at a change of address (down the street) which we notified ANR of 6 months ago after our landlord declined to give us an extended lease.
We informed ANR in July that we were moving the removal of TV boards, to test for reuse and resale, to a different building. We showed that we sell approximately $50k per month to USA repair shops - individually tested and inventoried circuit boards for $30 each. ANR said then that we had to change the address on the recycling insurance policy - which lists no address and covers pollution anywhere it's released. ANR said we must change the address on the bank financial mechanism - at a cost of $1500 - despite the fact it lists NO ADDRESS and covers recycling tonnage anywhere we might abandon it. Despite these two crystal clear evidence of incompetence or bias by the ANR staffer, the Secretary and administration has taken no action except to send another ANR staffer to inspect us in October. He said he saw zero evidence of any environmental violation under RCRA, and said that the administration of our recycling contract might be her issue (how she withholds funds).
That contract does say we must be R2 certified. We explained the move during our R2 audit and the auditor and SERI told us that so long as all the same downstreams and management systems were in place, that the change of address would be done at the anniversary of the next audit. If R2 does disqualify the same person from reusing the same TV circuit board, removed solely for the purpose of reuse, and the Vermont state statute clearly says that a device removed solely for the purpose of reuse is NOT recycling and is NOT governed by the statute, then R2 would be messed up.
None of our competitors in the ITAD and hard drive destruction business - or Vermont's own Surplus Property office - is required to have any of these insurance or certifications. Karen explained that is because the "purpose" of the drive removal is for "data reasons" and when our staff do the exact same action, it is for "recycling" reasons.
Hey, Governor Phil Scott, cleanup in Aisle 9.
Raise Your Hand if you know who STEVE JOBS is.
Now, Keep your hand raised if you know who Jim Puckett or Basel Action Network is.
Now, Keep your hand raised if you know who TERRY GOU is.
Keep your hand up if you know who Simon Lin is.
Keep your hand up if you know Dr. Graham Mytton is.
Keep your hand up if you know who Prince Nico Mbarga is.
Keep your hand up if you know who Awal Muhamed, Yaro Muhammed, or Razak of Savelugu is.
Keep your hand up if you've ever been to Savelugu.
Now unless you are author Adam Minter... my guess is your arms are back to your side. You'll need both of them when I conclude this talk.
The technology for "touch-screen" information feedback - sending data via touching a display device - was originally developed for cathode ray tube CRTs in Germany in (I think) the 1960s (based on my interview with Allen Liu, retired CEO of Net Peripheral, in 2016). That patent was either abandoned or purchased by the Taiwanese engineers - graduates from University of Taiwan in Taipei - decades later. These tinkerers* applied to very small handheld touchscreen devices. The "patent claims" by Apple and Samsung over smartphone touchscreen technology went nowhere 15 years ago (if anyone remembers those court cases, keep your hand raised) because neither invented it. Taiwan was the Cyrano of electronics invention, rising from "contract manufacturing" to schematic design wizards. Terry Gou is the Taiwanese CEO of Foxconn, which manufactures most iPhones. Simon Lin is the Taiwanese CEO of Wistron and Acer.
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The seat next to me is empty, because those of you who lowered your hands might think I'm an expert. But everything I'm telling you today is either public data, available from World Bank and IMF loans for electric grid and hydroelectric projects which provide electricity to more than 90% of people in the world. And if you had not interviewed fake experts like Jim Puckett of BAN, or Sasha Rainbow (Placebo MTV documentary director), or photojournalists like Kevin McElvaney and other "poverty porn purveyors" who got their information from Mike "Fishing as a Boy" Anane - that the center of capital city Accra was a remote fishing village in the 1990s... etc.
For twenty years, what I have learned by listening to the Tech Sector, listening to importers, listening to the founders of great OEMs, was derided by a lot of idiot white people who were given the privilege to sit before conferences in that chair. People from Greenpeace, from European institutions, people like Interpol's Cornelius... people who probably meant well, but who were completely responsible for the false arrest, denigration, defamation, discrimination, and imprisonment of Tech Sector workers like Joe "Hurricane" Benson, an African who may well have become the "next: Steve Jobs, the "next" Terry Gou, or the "Next" Simon Lin. (Keep your hand raised if you remember Steve Jobs second company, "NEXT").
Getting to know Megan Fontes, the new Executive Director of the Northeast Recycling Council this week. Lynn Rubenstein is retiring - Lynn and I worked together in several capacities over the decades (she came with me on my first visit to China in 2002).
Via LinkedIn, Megan just shared this article to ask my thoughts. Plastic – Fact over Fiction
Written by Chris DeArmitt. He's a paid "expert witness" who's got industry connections, but I guess I do too, and have seen my articles dismissed based on my "recycling business". The article makes several of the same points made in the Oregon study from a couple of years ago.
