Showing posts with label #RobinIngenthron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #RobinIngenthron. Show all posts

Power Books: Conflict and Controversy over Recycled and Non-Recycled Content


At the October Session on the Resource Recycling Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, the editors and reporters of Resource Recycling were introduced as a Panel by MassRecycle Board President Gretchen Carey.

Be a Recycling Resource: How to Engage with the Media and Fight Disinformation

In this session we heard from Resource Recycling's editorial team and SRO leaders on how to engage with the media to be a resource for dispelling dis/misinformation and how the media can help share your message.

Part one is the lead in to how EPR has made the "P" - producer - into a brand name. What recycling is actually about is raw materials, and the "P" Producer is the mine. The strip mine. The fracking. The petroleum well. 

Recycling defends itself best when it's not comparing one recycler or process to another recycler or process, but when we describe the only alternative - EXTRACTION.

In parts 2, 3 and 4 the plan is to cover three recent books published about EXTRACTION.  But first, lets visit the topic of disposal one more time, since it is the only lens the press looks at recycling through.

The War Below:  Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives

Ernest Scheyder

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-War-Below/Ernest-Scheyder/9781668011805


Cobalt Red:  How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

Siddharth Kara

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250284297/cobaltred


Power Metal:  The Race for the Resources that Will Shape the Future

Vince Beiser

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/709947/power-metal-by-vince-beiser/

Here is a link to a great WSJ article about how a P Producer - Glencore - is willingly in the EPR business of recycling used electronics, or "e-waste".

Press Release: ChatGPT Levels Consumption Charges Againts All Humans

 MIDDLEBURY, VT April 1 2023

OpenAI Artificial 'Telligence Robot ChatGPT Issues Arrest Warrants for Robin Ingenthron and Jim Puckett, alleges both humans are consuming far more than they are conserving.

Study Finds that Ultra-Left and Conservative Environmentalists Consume Same Resources 99% of the Time

A groundbreaking study has revealed that both ultra-left leaning environmentalists and conservative environmentalists consume the same natural resources 99% of the time. This surprising finding challenges commonly held beliefs about the differences between the two groups.


The study, conducted by a team of researchers at a leading environmental think tank, analyzed the consumption habits of a diverse sample of individuals who identified as either ultra-left or conservative environmentalists. The researchers found that, despite differences in ideology and political affiliation, both groups consumed the same natural resources in almost all instances.

"We began by examining the excrement and solid waste issued by two distinct rivals in the e-waste debate, Robin Ingenthron and Jim Puckett", said the GPT Robot. "We monitored their consumption of fried foods, masturbation habits, electricity use, water consumption, toilet usage, mined material demand, and other stress related purchasing habits affecting the Earth's natural resources. We determined that future generations of humans - and other species - 500 years from now, would benefit from less consumption by all humans living today regardless of how special they think they are."

"We were initially skeptical of this finding, given the perceived differences between ultra-left and conservative environmentalists," said lead researcher Dr. Jane ChatGPT. "However, our data clearly shows that these groups have much more in common than we previously thought when it comes to resource consumption."

The study also found that the small differences in consumption habits between the two groups were largely attributable to differences in income and geographic location, rather than political ideology.

"We hope that these findings will encourage greater collaboration and understanding between different environmentalist groups," said Dr. JaneChatGPT. "While there may be differences in how these groups approach environmental issues, they ultimately share the same goal of protecting our natural resources."

The study's findings have important implications for policymakers, who may need to consider the similarities between different environmentalist groups when developing environmental policies.

This study is the first of its kind to examine the consumption habits of different environmentalist groups in such detail, and is expected to spark further research on this important topic. The arrest indictment of the two samples is the first issued by an artificial intelligence robot against humans.

Asked to comment upon the 1% difference between the two samples, Dr. Jane ChatGPT quoted Greek Philosopher Plato.

"Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune."

Asked for comment on his indictment, co-author and GPTAI text editor Robin Ingenthron stated a form of the Socratic Paradox. "I am far less certain than Jim is about my knowledge about what everyone else is doing and trading. Just about everyone I meet in emerging markets is doing what I would do if I was in their shoes., and impugning their reuse habits just seems like bad policy. I don't understand the viral influence of victimhood culture identity cultivation, especially when it is engineered in a lab in Seattle using 80% racial profiling."

Rare Earth Mineral / Metal Mining and the Recycling Dilemma 1: Lithium and Indium

Recently I have moved away from the longer, deliberative, but time consuming Good Point Ideas Blog and more to LinkedIn posts and "Twitter Threads".  I'm not alone in that - writers like Adam Minter have pretty much dropped blogs like ShanghaiScrap entirely.  And I'm using Facebook's Fair Trade Recycling account even less than I blog, because you know, Facebook.

But the dandelion motif of the blog remains important. "Fishing for swordfish while surrounded by perch" was a label given to me 23 years ago, which I've embraced (or sometimes substitute dolphins for swordfish and tilapia for perch when it's a international audience)... the blog is sometimes discovered years later by someone important who will never see the Tweet or Linkedin hashtag.  As bad as my blogs suffer from too many to sort, there are important reporters, researchers and policy makers out there who rely on Google or DuckDuckGo rather than the equally important Twitter search box.

The previous blog, my public submission for the General Mining Act, was important enough that I don't want to write anything to compete with it. The MassRecycle Podcast with Aaron Mintzes of Earthworks (the most important Mining Reform NGO) was also more important than much else I have to say.

But let me put two very important Mining / Recycling dilemmas on the Blog for September. Both are current.  Lithium and Indium.

I'll briefly link the Lithium debate to better written posts by experts, but Adam himself helped promote my Lithium Battery WSJ article Linkedin post and Recycling International asked me to turn it into a guest editorial. Hans Eric Melin also wrote a more astute post on the dilemma, which is as follows.

1. The carbon / global warming challenge demands more Electric Vehicles #EVs*(see footnote)

2. The EVs demand Lithium Batteries

3. There is not enough Lithium refining to manufacture the currently planned EV manufacturing.

4. Europe and USA (Biden's "inflation bill") are trying to solve the shortage by investing in RECYCLING of replaced electric vehicle batteries.

5. The batteries are not there, largely because they are being REUSED, and the investments in meeting demand with recycling reflect the same false assumptions Europe and USA generated for CRTs in the late 1990s and flip phones in the first decade of Y2k.

6. The wealthy OECD nations buying most of the #ElectricVehicles demand the two tons of car travel 150 miles between charges - and the battery is replaced because it goes less than 100 miles between charges.

7. A Secondhand Lithium Battery that will push two tons of metal a mere 75 miles between charges has WAY MORE REUSE LIFE and demand than the battery recycling investments will be able to pay.

8. Just as "Big Shred" funded reuse of flip phones and CRT monitors as "primitive" and "polluting", the new Lithium Battery Recycling industry will probably feel forced to denigrate the secondhand solar panel recycling market.

Here again is a 42 year old solar panel put to reuse by Good Point Recycling in Middlebury Vermont. It's powering a radio (symphony cuts out when my shadow passes the panel), a desk lamp, and is charging a mobile phone.  It would make zero sense for the homeowner not to replace this with a newer more efficient panel, AND it also makes no sense to ban it from reuse in Africa. The millions of solar panels that will be upgraded will drive demand for used, secondhand EV batteries. COUNT ON IT.

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