Discard Something Today: Day One "Perishable Goods"

After reading author Adam Minter's Secondhand: Travels In the New Global Garage Sale, I'm confronted with my September 2019 dilemma.

Adam followed Good Point Recycling and one of our many overseas reuse partners, Chendiba Enterprises. And he corrected the abismal reporting on Agbogbloshie, to boot. He understood, and translated, my furious defense of geeks of color, accused of being "waste tourists" because "big shred", through its donations to NGO Basel Action Network,  had more clout with reporters than the accused.

But Adam's book revolves around the End... After Second-hand, there may be a third-hand. Rarely, a fourth-hand vintage collectible. He is fair in defending and supporting the reuse market. But the Secondhand Market is fundamentally tied to our parents death, and the cleanout of their homes one day, beit in Japan, Tucson, India, or Middlebury, Vermont.


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Nelson Mandela Funeral Sign Language Interpretor Fakes It, Too

When we talk about Real vs. Perceived Risks, "fool me once, shame on you" is the takeaway.

The "assistance" to the deaf viewers of Nelson Mandela's funeral service is in the news today.  The guy translating for several world leaders did not know what he was "talking" about, made it up as he went along.  Where have we seen that before?  (short video clips below)

Well, there was this funeral maintenance announcement by Saturday Night Live in the 1970s for Spain's General Franco.  Some blog readers are "video bandwidth impaired", and so I usually put clips below the fold (click "more")

What other "end of life" news turns out to be gibberish?

Eighty percent of all used electronics purchased by Africans are burned by children in primitive dumps, perhaps?    That Basel Action Network scandal is far more insidious, as it leads to actual seizures of goods and actual arrests of Africans, based on how loudly BAN.org claims it.

The Africans were accused of exporting junk in London in 2009 (following the late 2008 CBS 60 Minutes credibility scandal covering Guiyu, the "following the e-waste trail" scandal).  Greenpeace shot film of nice black TVs from a hotel takeout (working units replaced by LCDs and plasmas) being unloaded in Lagos.  It took months for Interpol and UK Wastecrime to organize seizures, but 279 sea containers were held in 2010.   In 2011 the UNEP released studies of the containers, siting 91% reuse.