Basel Action Network Continues Campaign of Racial Prejudice, Systemic Vocabulary Abuse, GPS Sabotage

 Every BAN press release is a lesson in vocabulary manipulation, not science.  

NGO sanctimonious vocabulary demands a rebuttal

For example, an enormous predictor that Jim is exaggerating are the words "waste" and "likely".  Jim of all people knows that "used goods" and "waste" are defined separately in international law, and that the key to guilt is intent. Otherwise, every brand new item that landed overseas - if it failed under warranty, or was damaged in shipping - would be a violation of international law.

BAN has, for two decades, tried to erase the fact that the most knowledgeable actors, the ones most in control of the trade, the purchasers least likely to waste money, are the oveseas buyers. They do not pay to ship "waste" with the intent to avoid costs they would certainly not incur, in the rich nations where they purchase surplus goods. The Action Network was exposed for fabricating a high percentage of waste (80%) (GPI blog, 2013) They did so in order to cause journalists and environmentalists to skip the side of the story from Joseph "Hurricane" Benson, and the overseas Tech Sector he came to represent. BAN issued macabre photos of dumps, where the junk being processed is mostly automotive and mostly was imported to those countries when Joe Benson would have been an apprentice TV repair tech in Nigeria... decades earlier. 

Facultat d'Informàtica de Barcelona Presentation: Influencing Environmental Impact of Marketplace with "Zeroknowledge"

A gigantic crane is swinging overhead, no doubt carrying some new material for the erection of another spire atop the Sagrada Familia Basilica, here in Barcelona.

It's a distraction from this week's challenge. How to explain to a group of Catalan University Professors how markets for used devices work, and how they can be measured without influencing the way they move. The title of our talk is "ZeroKnowledge". It is about the so-called "Observer Effect" in scientific study, and in particular, how data collection in "e-waste", "e-scrap", or "surplus property" can affect the policies and contracts and trade that add up to the actual outcome.

In my first chart, above, we can recognize the so-called "Circular Economy", but also the gravitational shortcuts of efficiency. When a ton does not "show up" to meet the scrap shredder/refiner/urban miner's prediction (and the hours of use of their shredding machine suffers), you cannot state that the material is "lost". It probably went into a more efficient gravitational orbit of "reuse". And countries which are good at reusing and repairing devices also tend not to throw copper away.  We may object to the way they extract the copper when the device is eventually discarded after many more years of use, but the calculation of environmental cost must be honest about the fact that brand new device production to meet the demand in emerging markets is a far worse carbon scenario. The two choices are, let them reuse and repair, or keep them in the dark (nighttime in "project eden").

But I digress. Today's talk is not about what the Waste/Mineral Policy should be, but about how the study, monitoring, regulation, certification, blockchain tracking, warranty registration, and GPS tracking devices will spin it, and to what ends.




Above are 3 slides we worked on with the Barcelona EReuse.org group.

They are working with us and a larger OBADA group to get Catalonian computer procurement officials to put into the RFP for purchase of new laptops a "blockchain" which would allow a surplus property officer at end of life to insert a USB key, find the blockchain, wipe the drive, and "inflate" a "spare tire license" such as Chromium or Linux.  The Spanish government would pay $1 per PC for "pre-wiping", which would be save $5 per HD wiping fees, and allow the PCs to be sold directly through surplus property auctions.

(longtime readers will recognize this "spare tire licence" from my first business in 2001).