Certification and Racketeering 5: Analysis of Seven GPS Tracking Studies

2018 GreenTrack Report found only 5% export, including export to OECD countries grntrac.com DWE

In the next blogs of this series "Certification and Racketeering", we look at a chart comparing 6 actual and 1 hypothetical use of GPS Tracking Devices to follow largely unwitting and unwilling subjects.  We compare methods of placement, tracking, and financial involvement of lead investigators. From there, we will delve into whether the study acts as "Environmental Watchdog" or merely protects the claims of being an authority when those claims are threatened. If, for example, a GPS tracking study specifically seeks to discredit or scandalize someone who has a beef with the Investigator, does that influence the mechanics of the study?

In the 7th hypothetical GPS Tracking study, I've deliberately created a clearcut "Racketeering" use (using the tracking study to offer a solution to a problem that would not otherwise exist without the financial interest of the investigator). The hypothetical would clearly be a matter for the American Civil Liberties Union, or EFF, or Interpol or Bob Mueller to decide. We then correlate the studies to see which ones have more in common with the Racketeering Hypothesis.  Then we look at quotes and behavior of the lead investigator.

Certain MIT students, when they get older, may want to come forward and disclose specific methods used to drop specific devices at specific places. I can promise anonymity and cover your costs. I can also put you in touch with MIT's own attorney, who took over correspondence after MIT Senseable City Lab excused themselves from further collaboration with BAN.org

Fair Trade Recycling Geek in Tamale, Ghana

Later, we will visit ("Take Your Pic") the use of cringy photos to jolt emotions when the actual statistical findings are not doing the trick. The art of a deal "selling" an unnecessary service, deceitful or otherwise, involves provocative / race-baiting imagery.

In the DWE tracking study, Dennis Ward    @dward_dennis gives us charts. In report by BAN, we have constant tear-jerking imagery evocative of our worst fears and perceptions of their so-called "Third World". But let's first focus on the methodology in 7 separate GPS Tracking Reports.

GPS trackers show exchange of products between two consenting parties.  There is not a single case of direct dumping of used electronics at foreign landfills. Who are we guilty of doing business with? And what makes our partnership suspicious?

Corrective and Preventative Action (CAPA)

Our company just went into an environmental "Surveillance Audit" for R2.  Some advice for people who are getting certified, or thinking about getting certified...

The temptation is to think that on the second audit, you've done this before.  You got the initial certification, you think that's the hard part.  No.   Joining the Army is the easy part.  Staying in the Army is the hard part.

When you think about it, there aren't too many economic incentives to keep someone out of a certification, whether it's E-Stewards, or R2, or ISO, etc.  What the company is signing up for is a process.  It's like joining a church, it's not about your past sins, it's about your commitment to being better.

What happened prior to our Surveillance Audit was that I took two trips to the Southwest (things are heating up at Retroworks de Mexico, despite the snow down there) and left people I trust in charge.  They have earned my confidence, as in confidence to do what I've trained everyone is our culture to do.

Efficiency, Good Work, Value, Accountability.  Get 'Er Done, combined with Know-How.

In that vein, everybody at the plant was motivated, without me telling them so, to make the place ship-shape.  We were proud of our company, and open to the audit with open arms.  A special clean up crew was assigned room by room to make sure everything was swept up and ship shape.

Well, we do "batch work" a few times a year.   Like we let the projection tubes build up until there will be enough of them to actually fill barrels with ethyl glycol.  If you do them as they come in, a few per day, you tie up more floor space with 1/8 full barrels which are actually more susceptible to spills than the projection tubes they were stored in.  So it makes sense, operationally, to store up 30 gaylords of the projection tubes when things are busy in the summer, and to keep people employed in the winter by draining them in a batch.

LCDs are similar.  In the first batch, you test working.  In the second batch, of the ones not working, you examine for capacitors and other "easily" repairable problems (for those in the know).  In the third batch, you leave for last the de-manufacturing of the busted-up-beyond-hope LCDs that need demanufacturing.

You are proud of the quality of your reuse.  We are led to believe, and it's true, that a lot of companies will sell the LCDs "as is" in a mixed lot.  Economically, you can "externalize" the cost of the LCD demanufacturing if you use the reuse value of the working and repairable to make the other LCDs tag along, as "toxics along for the ride".   So we haven't been doing that, we are proud to be tackling the hardest part of the work during the R2 winter surveillance audit.

So you've got a couple of people doing something new, something they aren't as experienced in, in the "batch work".  And you have a crew of eager clean up guys, circling around, trying to make the place look neat and orderly before the auditor arrives.

Crack.

That was the thin ice.