Vermont's Anti-Business Reputation? Yep, that's a thing. Part One Of ...?

Part 1, History 1999:  When I left my position as Division Director at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, I got a one-year special assignment to orchestrate the first CRT waste ban and recycling program in the USA. I got to promote/appoint my most talented staff... That is the thing I'm proudest of from that time.  It wasn't "recycler of the year" or the state legislature commendation, or the state employee of the year recognition, or increasing my program budget from $1M to $10M, or my own promotions.  I'm proudest of the demotion year, because that elevated people like Brooke Nash, John Fischer, and Greg Cooper (two of whom began as interns) to my empty chair.  Anecdotally, I got a pay raise (how demotions work at Mass State Employees Union) and three-day a week (to commute from Vermont), to focus on ONE big special project - cathode ray tube recycling infrastructure - which essentially became the Massachusetts "infrastructure business plan" for a TV and computer monitor waste ban.

"Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" is an idiomatic expression for an avoidable error in which something good or of value is eliminated when trying to get rid of something unwanted.^[1][2][3]

A slightly different explanation suggests this flexible catchphrase has to do with discarding the essential while retaining the superfluous because of excessive zeal.^[4][A]

Vermont Agency of Natural Resources and its DEC initially gave me a nod and showed respect when I left Massachusetts DEP and invested my sweat equity to start a consulting business on electronics recycling.  I got to meet with Bob Tonetti and Marilyn Goode at EPA in Washington, and they codified the Massachusetts DEP CRT recycling rules into Federal. I got to meet Michael Dell in Texas, I got invited to present to the California Resource Recovery Association CRRA Conference.

My message was reuse. Repair is the hospital, and Reuse is the orphanage, for used electronics. Recycling is the Morgue. Little did I know that to Vermont ANR, reusing a computer part to fix another computer would one day be presumed to be a murder of the first computer. The burden of proof is on the doctor saving the patient.

Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, to date, has appointed a RoboCop who doesn't care about orphanages or hospitals to throttle my company. It has been all about the morgue, and only the morgue. And they sent an inspector to investigate my company's reuse of solar panels last month... The problem was that they are not a problem yet... I've been predicting that solar panels are the "next CRT", and ANR acted too swiftly. And so I listed our 50,000 s.f. facility for sale, and moved half of my operations to Massachusetts in 2019. I remain with a foothold in dear old Vermont, but I see storm clouds in places far north of Puerto Rico...

But back to history - Why are we still talking about CRTs? Because all the orphan CRTs created the critical mass of users for Asia and Africa internet cables.  All of the orphan flip phones created the critical mass of users for 170,000 mobile phone towers operating today in Africa. And secondhand solar panels are about to be the babies boiled to be boiled in the bathwater. For that reason, Vermont will not be my place to invest in solar panel recycling. Two reasons - "No" and "Hell NO!" I'm not killing orphans, and will go to prison rather than build a business overseen by baby killers. Vermont can't get it right, because it has no spine to correct regulators, because stopping regulators from killing reuse orphans is "anti-regulator" and that is "bad". Orphanages and Emergency rooms saving patients are "anti-cemetery" and are presumed to be dumping the bodies on roadsides. Here in Vermont, we can't have that.

Toe tag. (2022, September 2). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_tag

Vermont Apple-to-Orange Software Validates CRT Recycling

(This is part of an April Fool's blog tradition, and I hope no one took it personally)

Small Northeast State Solves E-Waste Recycling Glut Profitably, with New Validation Procedures

[Middlebury, VT  April 1 2014]  It turns out there are two ways to solve the E-Waste Recycling Crisis.    In a stunning turn of developments, Vermont has validated a brand new way to recycle CRTs.


1.  Charge manufacturers more (42 cents per pound rather than 28)
2.  Demand less (allow land application)
3.  Profit!

Suppose there are two ways to do something.  One way takes a lot of labor hours, and then costs a lot to transport and treat the material.   The other way takes fewer hours of labor, but creates a mixed mess that is even more extremely expensive to transport and treat the material.  Normally, this is called "getting what you paid for".

But with an online thesaurus tool, Vermont "recyclers" are now "solving" this "e-waste" "problem".

Inequation disproved in 6 month study

"We were as stumped as the next state with the need to change our award winning state recycling program," said Vermont ANR Commissioner David Mears.   "But we made lemonade."

John Obfusca of Cali Waste Systems described the new development.  "One of our guys, at the end of the shift, just goes 'Hey, what if we just don't recycle it, but we call it something kinda alternativey?'  It turns out, you just have to name the process right to get it approved."

Diverting waste from a landfill into another landfill?  Land cover that fits the defination (per RFP) of "no land application"?   There's an app for that.

Mother Jones on Research In Cognitive Bias: and Vermont E-Waste?

"The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science"

"[Yale Pschology Research] undercuts the standard notion that the way to persuade people is via evidence and argument. In fact, head-on attempts to persuade can sometimes trigger a backfire effect, where people not only fail to change their minds when confronted with the facts—they may hold their wrong views more tenaciously than ever."

This is an excerpt from an article in Mother Jones, by correspondent Chris Mooney, who has been reading some of the same research on cognitive bias that I've been interested in for the past 4 years.   Neurological level research can detect brain stimuli which indicate a response (to risk) that acts faster than reason (also detected).   If an idea is a threat, either to a long held belief, or to ones self interest, brain radar can see it coming in a nanosecond.

What's a "convincing argument"?

This creates a real problem if your business is already in a bind.... outnumbered, overruled, the deck stacked against you.  Research indicates that "arguing convincingly" is an oxymoron.   If you are arguing with an entrenched authority who might be embarrassed by a reversal, you are statistically more likely to fail.  "You can't fight city hall..."

This is why the western legal system has evolved legal representation.  An attorney or lobbyist can be more skilled in making arguments indirectly, more nuanced, and avoid making the authority feel "risk impulses" which spell doom for the client. If the case has to be made, the legal counsel hopes the backlash befalls them, rather than the client.  It's also why we triangulate our justice system, with prosecutors, defenders, judge and jury.

People like John Adams, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson were anti-authority, and they were smart and argumentative and completely outgunned by the British monarchy.   The British Colonial game was rigged.  When the USA's founding fathers succeeded, the freshness of their experience led to a constitutional system which has made it less likely that an authority figure can run roughshod over a little guy.  We also have the fourth estate, journalism and free speech.

Heavy Hey Yah Vermont (Teach Me Lies) #Ewaste

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This is our song.  (Outcast)

Obadiah Parker (acoustic cover)

posted by Michael Schulte.  

Sounds truthful.  

but what about... teach me lies?  Nigeria's top video below.  Nigeria has Internet.

State Hate #1: "Secret Science Reform Act" vs. EPA

"Secret Science Reform Act": When Any "State-Hate" Reform Will Do?

I've been writing about my headaches with Vermont Agency of Natural Resources.  All nice people.  I wish they knew the 30 people at GPR were nice people.  It would be nice if they would have visited Good Point Recycling during the past 36 months.   That may have made it easier for them to explain why a Vermont company with a lower bid, 30 employees, R2-certified, no landfilling of CRT glass, and $488,000 less expensive, warranted a change in procurement.

For the record, while the state's selection of Casella is something we object to, competition is not.  We simply want to run an Independent Opt-Out plan, so that if Vermont districts and entities WANT to use Good Point, they can. 

However, Cathy Jamieson and her 2 staff are tilting the playing field AFTER they chose Casella Waste Systems, to make sure the horse (CWST) they bet on wins.  Whether or not the bidder selection was proper, the state is cheating against the Manufacturer Independent Plan.

Among citizens and recycling clients, there's a lot of fatigue with the story.  "I'm e-wasted out", a client told me. Vermonters tend to be strong and well educated environmentalists.  VPIRG is well funded.  The "Green Mountain State" is a Green mountain state.  Most people will attribute an angry regulated business owner to some kind of Republican Fox News related profit-motivated decision to expose the environment to risk.You know, risk perception.  Here's a link:   

Oscillatory Brain Activity Correlates with Risk Perception and Predicts Social Decisions

Pablo Billeke,  Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD), Facultad De Gobierno, Faculty Member

In social interactions, the perception of how risky our decisions are depends on how we anticipate other people's behaviors. We used electroencephalography to study the neurobiology of perception of social risk, in subjects playing the role of proposers in an iterated ultimatum game in pairs. Based on statistical modeling, we used the previous behaviors of both players to separate high-risk [HR] offers from low-risk [LR] offers. The HR offers present higher rejection probability and higher entropy (variability of possible outcome) than the LR offers. Rejections of LR offers elicited both a stronger mediofrontal negativity and a higher prefrontal theta activity than rejections of HR offers. Moreover, prior to feedback, HR offers generated a drop in alpha activity in an extended network. Interestingly, trial-by-trial variation in alpha activity in the medial prefrontal, posterior temporal, and inferior pariental cortex was specifically modulated by risk and, together with theta activity in the prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortex, predicted the proposer's subsequent behavior. Our results provide evidence that alpha and theta oscillations are sensitive to social risk and underlie a fine-tuning regulation of social decisions.

(Wow, how's that for a dollup of obfuscation?  If you can't follow it, however, you cannot understand or defuse "state hate")

Risk is a statistic, a perception, something to be weighed in scientific method.  It's also deeply rooted in our hippocampus, mitigated by the reasoning in the cerebral cortex.  How regulators (who tend to be risk averse) interact with entrepreneurs (with the opposite tendencies, relatively speaking) offers a case study for how democracy is breaking down,how libertarians and social conservatives and liberals are getting whipped around in circles.  Here is a national news story (Fox News) on a law proposed by GOP

Republican lawmakers in the House are pushing legislation that would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from proposing new regulations based on science that is not transparent or not reproducible.  The Secret Science Reform Act, introduced Thursday by Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., would bar the agency from proposing or finalizing rules without first disclosing all "scientific and technical information" relied on to support its proposed action.

Interlude: Geography, DNA, and Functionality

Loving v. Virginia

We have so many unpublished blogs at Good Point Ideas Blog that I'm thinking of publishing in a parallel universe.

The Demanufacturing Chapter was well received, and I'm working on trucking, tech and sorting and admin.

Here's a quick fact, however.  I have successfully transplanted techs from other countries.  I have transplanted Peru techs to the USA, and I've transplanted Malaysia techs to Egypt, and I've transplanted USA techs to Mexico.  And you know what?

It's just like organ transplants.  DNA (race) does not matter.  Borders do not matter.  All that matters is functionality.  If you need a kidney, it doesn't matter if you find the donor ugly, and the citizenship papers don't matter to the doctor.

The circuitry repair works exactly the same.

Procurement 101: Vermont E-Cycles Lessons

As the recycling program manager at Massachusetts DEP in the 1990s, I oversaw something like 40 contracts per year (if you include 03 consultant hires).  We went through one of the biggest bid challenges, for the Springfield Materials Recovery Facility, which saved the state about $1 million dollars per year by switching from an incumbent vendor.

We knew that if the incumbent vendor lost, that they were certain to challenge the bid, so I had lots of time with attorneys at MA DEP making sure that each step of our bid evaluation was transparent, and run by NASPO.org standards (National Association of State Procurement Officers).  (Link to Massachusetts Chapter 30B Guidance on Procurement)

The incumbent Springfield MRF vendor did appeal, and they even won an injunction keeping us from awarding the contract to a new vendor.  Even though the state was losing roughly $500,000 during the six month injunction, however, we saw our jobs as making a smooth and continuous transition, and further, to show that Massachusetts DEP did not even want to suffer the APPEARANCE of impropriety.  By NASPO standards, the appearance of shady procurement is just as costly to society as impropriety itself.  Once an injunction is granted, the best thing is to sit down, in full transparency, and let the protester's case be heard.

So we patiently worked with the incumbent vendor, in as professional a manner as we could, until the court hearing.  The court found The Massachusetts DEP's contract procurement process was valid and dismissed the injunction.  But like an appealed referee's call in an NFL game, no one accused anyone of doing anything in bad faith.  And at this time, I'm not making any noise about bad faith in Vermont.

You will see in the news cycle a number of stories about the State of Vermont's E-Cycles ("e-waste") contract procurement, which my company, along with NRRA.net, administered for the past 27 months, with generally rave reviews.   The truth is that before the Vermont electronics recycling law had even passed, my company had already set up the infrastructure, and had a turnkey proposal in place in 2011.

This is not the time or the place to air our concerns about the new 2014 contract, or the merits of the two proposals the state decided between.  But this is a time to look at Vermont Procurement laws, and ask why "safety railings" are not in place to keep vendors and regulators from having it out in the press.  That's what NASPO standards were created to avoid.

"Does the injunction save the state money while providing the public assurance to a fair review of the process?"  If the answers to both questions is "yes", why fight the injunction?  Save tax money, hear the appeal out, and start the new contract when you've won.

False Recycling Witness: It Goes To Credibility

False Eyewitness:   I can prove that Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network knows the factories he accuses R2 of dealing with are not creating the pollution his organization publicly accused them of last week.

One of E-Stewards own auditors physically inspected one of these facilities (later visited by reporter Adam Minter), and Jim an I had in depth discussion following that audit, much of it written, about his position on the Basel Ban Amendment being inconsistent with even pristine, non-polluting repair (he conceded to me that the Basel Convention itself allows these facilities, but said in his view the Basel Convention, as it now stands, must be amended).  The "compromise" was to remove parts in the USA prior to export, rather than what we proved was happening - proper recycling of those parts.  He did not like that the focus material circuit boards went with the off-spec and warranty takeback circuit boards back to Japan.

[clarification: Jim's organization specifically accused these factories in the Boston Globe article of March 2010, and last week emphasized the accusation ("inflicting tremendous harm"...) During detailed conversations and disclosures about this type of factory ("California Compromise")  the "technicalities" Jim objected to never approached this falsehood (i.e. even if the factory ships electively upgraded parts to Japan for recycling, that technically a "transboundary shipment" had occurred between export from OECD USA and recycling of the removed part at OECD Japan).  

"This includes untested and/or non-working equipment exported for refurbishment or reuse, some of which is currently allowed under the R2 Standard. Refurbishment often produces hazardous waste, which is responsible for inflicting tremendous harm on the citizens and environments of these nations."

This makes 3 public accusations specific to "semiknockdown", "elective upgrade", and "warranty repair".  One in E-Scrap News (fair trade is not poisoning people), one in the Boston Globe, and last week's, shown above.   This is now an open book.  BAN says that the Basel Convention, by allowing export for repair at original equipment assembly factories under Annex IX B1110, is responsible for poisoning people, and must be amended and changed.  He has specifically said to me that if the Basel Convention is ratified by the USA without the Ban Amendment, that it would be a bad thing.

This establishes that the organization, Basel Action Network, has publicly maintained it is a crusader for international law, but is in fact an anti-globalization organization which believes that trade between 17% of the world and the other 83% of the world is inherently bad.  People like me, with backgrounds in international development of Africa and Latin America and Asia, are horrified by this "war on trade".  The mystery is how the Press has accepted that EPA is bad, ISRI is bad, recyclers are bad, tinkerers/fixers/geeks are bad, and joined this Salem Witch Trial verdict against the Basel Convention while citing, in article after article, the Basel Convention as the source of ethical recycling.

Injustice:  We expect his false accusations, pairing photos of the factory which originally made the monitors with pictures of dirty operations in Guiyu, to have their intended effect.   The false accusation from a non-profit NGO will create enough doubt in contractors, and enough opportunity for anti-white-box (off brand) computer remanufacturers, that companies like mine will be forced to sever ties.  The factories will either A) remain by buying the product to be refurbished elsewhere (outside Europe and USA), or B) be shuttered like the factories in Indonesia.

Smoking Gun:  BAN specifically knows that this factory is not "inflicting tremendous harm" on the citizens.  This is a clear case of BAN leading the public to believe that the very best of the non-OECD 6 billion people is the same as the very worst, Guiyu.

Motive:   This non-profit sells its influence for cash.  While claiming to be an ethical e-waste recycling advocate, BAN knowingly makes false witness against the best and brightest in the converging and emerging markets.   BAN has accused sustainable factories which replace bad capacitors (Capacitor Heroes) of being a significant source of pollution.   BAN takes money from manufacturers who use non-recycled, mined content, from pollution hellholes like OK Tedi PPG and Kabwe Zambia.  They use that money in a cynical campaign to shut down reuse facilities which create high tech repair jobs in cities which desperately need those jobs.  They are succeeding at shutting down sustainable, clean factories, which sell refurbished computers in democracies like Egypt and India and Indonesia... with money from mining to produce tablets and high end computers which those countries cannot afford.