The Battle for Reuse "Good Enough" Market: Solar Panel's "Primitive" Recyclers

There is a nascent discussion at SERI R2, 

at EPA, and E-Stewards 

about what the "maximum life" of solar panels are. 

I've had several discussions with experts like Cascadeem.com's Curt Spivey, Veolia's Paul Conca, and solar panel manufacturing experts on what "specification" a panel must meet before a buyer is allowed to be "legitimate". 

Curt and Paul are smart, but they are nervous about their own "accountability" - that they may be held to if they sell their clients' electively upgraded panels overseas.  Other recyclers are taking a strong a priori stand against export of solar panels for reuse.  Note that these are potential sellers of used equipment, discussing which buyers are "legitimate" or "primitive". 

It's a continuation of privilege. No one seems to worry about the mining of raw materials in developing countries, despite the fact that the cleanest virgin material mining is worse than the worst possible recycling. But are the others good enough people to get their electricity from a reused solar panel? If in doubt...

The video above is a 42 year old solar panel sent to Good Point Recycling for end of life recycling. It's widespread "truth" that panels function for 30 years. But that "30 year estimated life" statistic was put in print before any panel was more than 10 years... it was (like "80% of ewaste" stats) made up by someone with zero knowledge of the future life of the panel... ostensibly I'm told it had something to do with a procurement specification or waranty request.  But "30 years" is hocus pocus, not reality.

Procurement to the Rescue of the Right To Repair 2: Chess Game To Future-Proof

While I'm a big supporter of the Right To Repair legislation, a friend in an influential position at DEP (former hire, elevated to my former position) asked the Zoom group whether Right to Repair Legislation should be their top priority.

Fair Use Review

I'm always on my guard against "Group-Think".  Here were 15-20 proponents of reuse, actively engaged in DEFENSE of repair.  What did we all have in common, and how could common thought become a weakness?

In a tweet later, @WR3A (World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association, my Twitter handle created 12 years ago) I used the words "my one qualm with #RightToRepair [as a movement] is that it is backward oriented. Trying to take back too many chess moves by planned obsolescence which were already played [successfully, by OEMs]... Each new device developed or sold is the next chess game. I recommend government procurement contracts as the opening move."

Ironically, the Right to Repair twitter advocate who responded (a friendly fire incident, if I offended) responded in a quote tweet... "Made the move to influence government buying at least 6 years ago. Have the conference badges to prove it. If only it were that easy. OEMs have made sure that the GSA won't even consider buying used equipment. If only it were that easy..." 

[as if I'd dispute it? I've got them going back to 1990]

My point about Procurement isn't about government buying used equipment. It is about strategically wording FTC-backed warranty language on things the government hasn't even purchased yet. Backward Oriented, Exhibit A?

Nuance Delivery 4: Correcting Our Aim

Having trouble with the video editing software to get Oluu Orga's excellent video-bio on his years in Agbogbloshie up for view.  I had been using Picasa for the previous videos I edited. Alphabet (Google) is kind of the popular boyfriend/girlfriend that only dates you for a couple of years and then loses interest... Love their free products but they wind up dropping support and pulling the plug-ins.

While I keep working on it, I'm also getting ready to receive a bunch of African Fair Trade Recycling members. Wahab "Ghana Tech" is arriving in Boston. Emmanuel Nyaletey arrives tomorrow from Georgia Tech. Evans Quaye of Accra is networking in South Africa.  Web Element is completing their Fair Trade Recycling Waste Offset (re-export) paperwork at Ghana EPA. Our newest Fair Trade Recycling staffer, John Sumani of Wa (far Northwest), a Ph.D in environmental studies, has a good network at Ghana EPA. The Techs of Chendiba Enterprises check in politely now and then. And the "three musketeers of Agbo", Awal, Yaro and Razak, have their Whatsapp credits ready to spend (at all hours of day and night).

Right To Repair Act - Grandparent Tire Time

Since we are on the subject of passing big laws to save our soldiers, African children, or UK's circular eddy current economy from lost strategic metals, here's a reminder of another big law out there.  EFF and IFixit remain the champions of protecting consumers from "copyright" and "patent" laws taking away their right to tinker with their cars, electronics, and other stuff.

This was a major battleground - in my mind - in the 1990s.  I was raised (here in the Ozarks, where I'm visiting for an unrelated EOL issue with a relative) that the smartest farmers knew how to fix stuff, and could save their family a lot of money by buying broke stuff from rich people who didn't know how to repair (or just wanted "elective upgrade").  Every summer my grandpa had me under a car or truck, showing me how they were making the spark plugs harder and harder to replace.  "Why in the world would they design this motor so that you need hydraulic motor hoist to change he spark plugs!?!?"  His suspicion was that they did it on purpose.

Copyright and patent laws entered into a gray area with software.  The right to own and copy some software that an author wrote was protected by different laws than protect the consumer's property rights and warranty rights under the Magnusum - Moss Act of 1975. Below is a rare "5-mod-up" comment of mine on the subject of Right to Repair on Slashdot /. which is a forum I started following at MassDEP when the internet was new, and I was researching electronics repair.

I've written about that law because when I first went to college and  Minnesota PIRG had a negative-check-off to add a fee to my Carleton College tuition bill, I wanted to know who PIRG was.  I read up on it at the library (nothing online then), and saw they were associated with consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader, who I learned about in high school when "planned obsolescence" and Vance Packard came up in class.

E-Waste Tragedy 10: The Crime is a Curiosity

This week, in one of my favorite magazines, The Atlantic, we get yet another "Gaze" on Agbogbloshie to finish the year.   Yepoka Yeebo recycles the story that suggest Africans like Emmanuel Nyaletey, Miguel Artur Aziz, Hamdy Moussa, Wahab Muhammed "Project Eden" comes to Africa's rescue, putting African Joseph Benson in prison.

The Tinkerer's Blessing is not "stuff".  The Blessing IS The Tinkerers themselves.  The reuse, repair, shangzhai, ifixit, repairers made Singapore, all the Asian Tiger economies, out of reuse.  They repaired for resale, harvested parts to build around.   Why don't we see that Africa's strongest economic growth is grown by GENIUSES in the same reuse/hacker mode?

The TRAGEDY is that we are putting Tinkerers in jail, accusing them of importing junk for burning (economically impossible), drafting Guidelines around "protecting Eden".  Bullets to the head of Africa's best and brightest, shot by green do-gooders, in a perverse friendly fire.

"The Crime is Curiosity" (1995's The Hackers)

In E-Waste Tragedy 1-6, we dug into the law - or rather "guidelines" for export of used electronics which BJ Electronics was accused of violating.  I believe Joe Benson pleaded guilty (in return for a reduced sentence) because he did not know how to argue that a "Guideline" is not a law.  The Guidelines were developed under the PACE committee, which was charged with reducing the alleged 80% bad exports.   A statistic which was a lie.

A lie supported by "Soddom and Gomorrah" images, and coverage by Scientific American of a fake, fudged, hoax claim mysteriously given credence by Blacksmith Institute a year ago (December 17, 2013).  The Atlantic, ironically, just treads safe ground in Agbogbloshie.

Something had to be done, and the Guidelines were something, therefore Joe Benson had to follow the Guidelines... even though the Guidelines never claim to be law, and the viable recommendations submitted to PACE by the geeks themselves ("elective upgrade") were ignored.  The Guidelines were drafted to provide "guidance" to environmental enforcement agencies, like Chris Smith's UK Environmental Agency, not as guidance for entrepreneurs like Souleymane, Wahab, or Hamdy.  Beat cops, like Cees Van Duijin of Interpol, needed something to tell them whether a sea containerload of used CRT televisions from a hotel LCD upgrade were evidence of #wastecrime.   PACE protected USA and EU refurbishing companies, allowing them to "determine" reuse, with no say from the expert buyers.

Stewardship's Hashtag Selfie  [Top 11 Parodies of "AID" in 2014]

Tragedy 2: The"Non-profit" Sanctimony Source Code

New Orleans non-for-profit public school - Ruby Bridges 1960 - Happy Birthday

Do not mistake "margins" for greed.   Having a margin, or "profit", on a transaction is like insurance.  Someday you will have another transaction... an unintended loss, or a call for help. Your margin allows you to have a positive impact on other peoples lives (employees, creditors, family).  Things don't always go as planned.  There is no place that's more true than Africa.

In the words of an old chum at the University of Arkansas, here's how most of us see wealth.

'I see dollars kind of like I see calories.  When I see a person who doesn't get enough calories, who's skinny and weak, it makes me uncomfortable.  It's unattractive.   When I see someone who's getting more calories then they need, I kind of see it like an obese person.  It's unattractive.   I like to be around healthy people who make enough money.' - Bertrand X?, friend at U of A

But there is an entire group of people who think "profit" is "likely bad".  They are anti-globalist.  And they often seek out a once-obscure federal tax statute to "certify" business partnership.

"Your company is for profit.  I work for a non-profit.  You shouldn't charge me recycling fees."  

I made more money working for non-profits than I have made running a small business, and I have helped more disadvantaged people with my business than I helped working in the not-for-profit sector.  I'll demonstrate that later.   But using a tax code to predict environmental outcomes was a key ingredient in the decade's "e-waste tragedy".  I'm not going to attack non-profits, but the belief that the tax status is necessary or sufficient to predict best behavior will attract wolves in sheeps' clothing.

Why do people attach a moral fetish to a federal corporate income tax filing statute?  What's with the obsession over corporate filings, as an indicator of morality? Why are some people more suspicious when I take my personal savings, buy a truck, drive it for income, and pay taxes on that income?  What makes a federal tax category more "honest" and more "trustworthy" than a small business?