PRESS RELEASE: Recycling Sisterhood Bene Gesserit of Sustainability Thwarting Harkonen Waste Management

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 1, 2025

Waste Arrakis: Elite Recycling Sisterhood Revealed as Bene Gesserit to Thwart Harkonen Waste Empire

BOSTON, MA – In a stunning development uncovered today (April 1st, obviously), a covert order of elite recycling professionals has been outed as none other than the secretive Bene Gesserit of sustainability—a powerful collective silently shaping the environmental future of the galaxy... one compost bin at a time.

The Prophecy: Children and great-grandchildren yet to be born will care whether we kept the water pure and made finite world resources last, and they will appreciate the sustainability we try to care about today.

Operating for decades under the guise of state officials, nonprofit leaders, and municipal department heads, this fearless group has been secretly resisting the expansion of the galactic menace known as Harkonen Hauling Waste Management, along with its sinister subsidiaries: Harkonen Mining (motto: "Strip it faster!") and Harkonen New Produce Obsolescence Corporation (creators of the 6-day toaster).

When the Harkonen Waste Wars latest battle brought on gaslighting of recycling participants, markets, businesses, and workers - with bold "RECYCLING IS A LIE" Blimps floating over Earth Day Festivities, it awakened a quiet set of sorceresses who have been supporting the environment for decades, as described in the Great Book of Recycling.

Meet the Sisterhood of the Circular Economy:

• Brooke Nash (MA DEP) – High Reverend Mother of End Markets and Master of the “Waste Not” Litany.
• Megan Schulz-Fontes (NERC) – Keeper of the Northeast Waste Path and Mistress of Materials Flow.
• Laura Olivier (Earthworm Recycling) – Whisperer of Compost, Summoner of Worm Armies.
• Reagan Bissonette (NRRA) – Wielder of the Spice of Source Separation; Prophetess of Post-Consumer Peace.
• Gretchen Carey (MassRecycle) – Queen of Education Outreach, feared for her deadly accurate eco-haikus.
• Terri L. Goldberg – Supreme Auditor of Hazardous Substances and Knower of All That is Buried.
• Kathi Mirza (MA DEP) – Code-breaker of Collection Data; her spreadsheets strike terror into the hearts of cartels.
• Waneta Trabert (Newton MA DPW) – Commander of Municipal Resistance, known as “The Waste Whisperer of Walnut Street.”
• Abbey Massaro (MassRecycle) - Vision Mother of the Context.

The Prophecy: Future generations around the world will benefit from one person's impact - each of our impacts. What we are doing today will matter.

The Conflict:

As Harkonen forces spread cheap plastic packaging, fake recycling apps, and new operating systems that turn working laser printers into boat anchors, the Bene Gesserit Recycling Order has activated their plan: The Great Diversion. It includes zero-waste Jedi training, organics mind-melding, and an AI-powered Extended Producer Responsibility sandworm.

“We must conserve for the next generation, the prophesized children of the future,” said Nash during a recent council. “We will not permit the waste stream to flow unchecked.”

Sources say the Sisterhood has infiltrated multiple board meetings under the cover of “public comment periods” and is rumored to have hypnotized several corporate executives with repeated chants of “Reduce, Reuse, Refuse.”

The Prophecy: Mothers will see the importance of the world their children's children will inherit.

"Extract! Carbonize! Brickware! Dispose!" - Harkonen Waste Motto

What’s Next?

A climactic battle is rumored for Earth Day, in which the Sisterhood will ride in on solar-powered e-bikes to challenge the Harkonen clan at their last known landfill stronghold, armed with reusable tote bags, carrot peels, and a binder of intergalactic waste bans.

When asked for comment, Harkonen CEO Vladimir Dumpstrakh simply muttered, “Curse those witches of waste... they sorted everything.”

The Prophecy: A kinder, gentler, more sustainable Sandworm can be nurtured and bred, to make our Spice more sustainable...

Anne McGovern, Christine Beling, and Susan Cascino, Laura Dubester, Lynn Rubenstein - and many others whose claims that the Sisterhood existed were scorned as Recycling Lies - are passing out the Prophesy Popcorn.

5 Bells: Blogger Declares "E-Waste Hoax is Dead"

Shaba Kahamba, the Artist formerly known as Prince, and the E-Waste Hoax are dead.*

The second of the list, Prince, the incredibly famous purple dancer, was found passed out in an elevator, and declared dead at age 57.  Shaba Kahamba, the Congolese Soukous bassist legend, died peacefully in retirement in the Netherlands on Tuesday... in somewhat undeserved obscurity.   And the E-Waste Hoax will be remembered only by its silence.  There is no "correction" forthcoming from BBC, Economist, NYT, NPR, etc.  But I predict no further national or international coverage of any "e-Waste" emergency this Earth Day, one year after the news "jumped the shark" in declaring a small scrap metal pile in Western Africa to be the largest E-Waste Dump on Earth.

After a decade of NGO hype, what makes me think that "ewastegate" is over?  And not with a clang, but a whimper?

There may be some residual stories about "e-waste exports" cropping about here and there, but mostly they are coming from rank amateurs like Kevin McElvaney, people in their 20s with a camera. But the source of the hoax statistics is running out of funding, and not a decade too soon.

*homage to "the Oxford Comma"... Shaba K and TAFKAP are two different people.

FIREHOSE BLOG: Madness vs. Persistent Irrational Belief

How many "E-waste" Experts and E-Waste Studies does it take to show that material like THIS

Is not paid for, shipped and delivered to, places like THESE?

We know who the buyers are.  We know they have no interest in buying the material that BAN.org shows in photos.   We know the factories are operating in cities overseas which have had TVs and computers for years, and who generate more e-waste on their own than we do per year in the USA (they have less storage space in attics and closets).

Can someone please explain to me the persistent irrational belief by Watchdogs that the municipal material shown in the first photo is being exported in any significant quantity to Africa or Asia?

A Modest Moral Proposal: Blow Up Basle

Why the Basel Convention Should be Morally Sunset.

Basel Perspective is Set in Stone

MORALITY DIMENSION 1:  Integrity.   Whether it's from Mother Theresa, or Honor Among Thieves, or Al-Qaeda's word of honor.  This was the focus of yesterday's post on "favors".  You are who you say you are and you do what you say you will do.

MORALITY DIMENSION 2:  Intent.  Distinguishing between the good deeds of Mother Theresa and the bad deeds of Thieves... is the intent good or evil?  Just how moral are the things you intend to do?

MORALITY DIMENSION 3:  Effect/Outcome.  Whether through ignorance, or butterfly effects, did our best intentions (#2) and integrity (#1) result in something we'd judge as good?  And how negligent were we if the "best intentions" go berzerk, or the perfect became the enemy of the good?

On the last, the problems we have in society are pride and ignorance.  Religious believers who believe so intently in their prayers that they feel honor to strap on a suicide belt, that's the worst extreme (assuming God didn't personally tell them otherwise after all).  But the literature also shows how people become vested in their image, their mistaken beliefs, financial motives, groupthink, their causes, and their dissonance, and just bad risk-benefit math.

Here's an idea:  If we set a bunch of rules based on who was rich in 1960 to govern which cell phone factories can take back and refurbish the smart phone e-waste in 2012, maybe we should set an egg timer on those rules?  Maybe ... just maybe.... these no longer "define morality"?  Maybe what seemed moral for a broken black and white TV set in 1960 Dublin, Birmingham, or Athens doesn't still predict the best thing to do with a repairable HTC Evo 4G sold to Singapore, Taipei, or Dubai?

E-Stewards is stuck in time. Static.  It appears to sink as the rising tide of emerging markets renders both the generation and end-of-life recycling statistics of 2002 completely and utterly analog.  Maybe regulations written on typewriters, corrected with liquid paper, are too hard to update when elective upgrades and off-lease purchases and hot capacitor swaps make 4G recycling auto-correcting freedom geeks kneel to dictators' thugs, patent trolls, and anti-gray obsolescence corporations?  Rules written for the classified ads of print news may not sync to with Alibaba.com.

It's not just "the war is over, dad".  This is a totally different war than the Basel Convention waged against drums of toxic waste dumped on the beach in Cote D'Ivoire (Ivory Coast).  This is a patent extention war waged most fiercely against Guangzhou geeks refilling "disposable" ink cartridges, and Cairo fixers swapping blown capacitors off of returned Optiplexes.

Environmentalists of Earth Day 1970 - we are no longer young.   We must see that the dogmas of our elders are not a disease to which we are somehow immune.