Civilization corrals the Amygdalas: Howler Monkey Gods

Amygdala Hijacking sounds uncivilized. But it's hard to imagine a society without it.

Societies will always vote for a dictator over chaos, or in reaction to a fear of anarchy.  But this isn't a political post, at least not yet. 

First a disclaimer... I believe in "Western Civilization", but think the term "West" is in some ways a historical accident. The great library burnings in the mideast, Alexandria, and most especially the Aztec/Inca libraries destroyed by self-proclaimed Spanish "Christians" hid the evolution of other logical and obviously city-pyramid-construction-capable cultures. 

But while "cultural cleansing" is a historically obvious problem, the current DEI narrative fails to recognize its universality. Am I mistaken, or didn't Hopi Indians build pueblo structures whose sole purpose was to protect them from the Apache "race". Incas had wars and who knows how many libraries were burned by Alexander the Great? Or how much of the greatest loss - the library of Alexandria - was pilfered from other libraries in Mesopotamia and south Asia conquests?

So the theme today is taking an actual provable problem and weaponizing it to achieve Authority. And as the symbol of that authority let's not use "high priest" or "ayatollah of e-waste" or "priestatollah", but the Mayan Howler Monkey God.

The Lithium Rule: Do Unto The Others Yet To Be Born...

"Do Unto The Others Yet To Be Born As You Wish Your Ancesters Would Have Done For You"

I have finally gotten my motto. This is a philosophy I landed upon as a teenager - to see the world from the vantage point of future children I'll never meet.

Let's label this the "Lithium Rule"... Since if it isn't searchable, it hasn't been labelled as of yet. It helps that I misspelled "Ancestors", of course.

"Do unto the others yet to be born as you wish your ancestors would have done unto you"

Surely I'm not the first one to come up with this?  But Google suggests I may be the first to publish it online (which I'm quite aware isn't all 8 billion of us with that privilege... and also this is in English). I searched it both ways, done for you or done unto you... first dibs. It is...

The Lithium Rule.

Do not do to future generations that which you wouldn't want previous generations to do to ours.

Ethical Automobile Airbags - Sodium Azide. Carcinogen, Mutagen, Toxin saving lives at EOL

 Work up this morning wondering where automobile airbags wind up when used cars are sold for reuse in Africa. 

The automobile airbag, mandated after valiant effort to protect consumers by Ralph Nader's organization in the 1970s, is a wonderful invention.  Here's a video of one deploying.

Cool huh? But after your life is saved in the crash, what happens to the airbag? 

How it works (at least in older models of cars, most often exported to Africa) is that a highly toxic, known mutagen, suspected carcinogen, CDC advisory toxic chemical SODIUM AZIDE is triggered by an electrical charge.

Ethical Gravity 1: NPR Throughline, History of the Ethics of Litter (and Vermont's Historical Role)

This is really worth a listen. It's a brief history of Keep America Beautiful, the history of ethical concerns over litter, and how voters are sent "grasping at straws", or recycling, rather than focus on the environmental legacy of extraction.

NPR's series Throughline takes a swing at how voters are influenced through guilt, and how that guilt can be diluted, harnessed, or its trajectory influenced by PR.

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/04/757539617/the-litter-myth?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&t=1568103603057

The broadcast starts early on with my state of Vermont, which passed the first anti-single-use law to prevent litter. That led to the Keep America Beautiful industrial organization, which leveraged white guilt  through TV PSAs... but also acts as a "gatekeeper" or authority over what voters are told to keep in mind when they feel the gravitational pull of their liability or responsibility.  (I'd previously started a draft blog a month ago on the Crying Indian, but this program does better than I can).

Industry creates environmental awareness around litter because it's closer to more people's personal responsibility and "ethical gravity".

As I shared in a retweet of MIT's Jeremy Gregory's link to the NPR story, this keeps us away from extraction, mining reform, externalization of forestry and oil drilling.

The environmental impact is mostly at a point of extraction & creation. The focus on end of life is fetishism - similar to the way we spend 9/10 health care dollars on the last year of life. Probably [Steven Pinker] @sapinker could explain fear of / obsessions with "end points in plain sight".

Will have more to write about this, and explain what I mean by "ethical gravity" and personal sense of liability for a piece of litter, as opposed to the environmental costs of the mining or forestry or carbon or energy behind the production of that litter.  In fact, the whole plastics packaging debate completely ignores how much more efficient plastic packaging is at protecting - and extending the lifescycle - of food products (compared to selling food and drink in glass or cans or cardboard).

Pharmaceutical Recycling 2: Rich Liability vs. Poor World Shortages

George Washington Carver Is Not Liable For Peanut Butter Allergies (he didn't even invent it)

In Part 1, I introduced this topic after opening a piece of mail telling us that a $500-something dollar epipen we own had reached its expiration date.  It made me curious whether the "obsolescence" of the pharmaceuticals equated to actual risk, and made me think about the different financial implications for wealthy, poor, stockholders, etc. And how the psychology of "greed and fear" is used as a persuader to advance the interests of those parties.  From Part 1:

In the case of an epi-pen, "less effective" is certainly a concern if you can afford a new one.  But if my kid starts to suffer a life-threatening peanut allergy reaction, I'm not going to check the date on his epi-pen.

What about "elective upgrade"? Can I sell my expired epi-pen, and buy a new one to satisfy my risk averse kin?  That reduces MY liability (to my son), but is my liability somehow "externalized" to poor people?

Hint:  No

But let's see how the Policy On Pharma Storage or Disposal (not recycling) is covering the exits.

MIT Ethics Inquiry? Senseable City Lab and BAN GPS Tracking Update

As we near the end of 2016, and I review the engagement of the published blogs this year, it appears I need to update readers on the apparent stonewalling of our requests for information and review of MIT Senseable City Labs "collaboration" with Basel Action Network's GPS tracking of used electronics.

I slowed down on the reporting in part because I had to engage with actual attorneys... MIT's, one of the "collateral damage" processors at Hong Kong's Eco Park, and my own.  Obviously Hong Kong Environmental Department attorneys must be involved in responding to BAN's accusations (in China Daily) that their legal opinion - that printer scrap is not hazardous waste and not illegal to import - was against international law (according to USA-based BAN.org). Also a few of the companies mentioned in the report as being in the "chain of export" cautioned me about the "Streisand Effect".  If reporters were by and large (other than PBS and Time) ignoring BAN's study, why risk elevating it?

Well enough time has gone by for an update.

1. MIT did not confirm or deny that a copy of my letter was given to its Ethics Review Committee.  They sent it instead to Basel Action Network, the organization we thought entangled MIT in the ethical research questions to begin with (and who I did not address in the letter for that reason).
2. Evidence has come to light that BAN had the ability to control the outcome in real time.  This risk was not addressed by Carlo Ratti's team.  BAN admits they knew where the devices were at intermediaries DURING the study.
3. My company shipped printer scrap to another shredder, on several occasions, which pays BAN e-Steward royalties.  We shipped printer scrap to that company immediately before the load (also to the Chicago area) the month before the tracking device came to Good Point, and a month after the device was shipped to the company that exported it.
4. DURING THE MONTH IN BETWEEN the company which pays BAN royalties stopped accepting our material!  We had actual cancellations of deliveries of printer scrap while the tracking device was at our property!

At the very least, this seems a strong reason not to publish the names of unwitting and unwilling test subjects involved in the chain.  While we don't know about this particular case, we do know some in the chain were more "witting" than others.  I revealed last summer that at least some E-Steward companies knew the trackers were in the field, and at least some were involved in selecting which devices to track.

This does not prove that BAN colluded with or warned their sponsor company that we had a device on our property, or that the information resulted in the delivery being cancelled until the device was off our property.  That information is "continuously unknown".

It does show the need for MIT's existing rules on testing of unwitting subjects, and rules on conflict of interest.  And there can be no bigger example of a conflict of interest than between Basel Action Network and Fair Trade Recycling.

Geography Baiting 3: Retribution Strikes Press Release from BAN

While we wait patiently for answers from MIT about the ethics questions we have on Senseable City's "joint project" with Basel Action Network, BAN strikes.

"40% of  e-Waste given to Recyclers gets Shipped Illegally to Polluting Operations Overseas" - Jim Puckett, Basel Action Network

Since we have sent multiple letters to MIT and emails to BAN, offering to meet to show our processes and all downstream information, we know that BAN is conscious of the false and derogatory information embedded in this statement, explained below.  The question is, do they do it purposefully to cause harm?

1.  It is NOT 40% of e-Waste given to Recyclers.

BAN never tracked 65% of the weight (CRT and projection TVs that practically never get exported).  They sample tracked 3 types of device (printers, CRT monitors, LCDs) and found - of those - that about 36% were exported.   36% of 35% is not 40%.

2.  Most of the 40% tracked was NOT shipped illegally.

We showed here on the blog devices tracked to reuse and refurbishing operations.  Also, Hong Kong doesn't consider printers hazardous waste and BAN attacks them for classifying them as non-hazardous waste even as BAN calls them "clearly" hazardous waste in their report.

3. Most Overseas Operations are NOT Polluting.

The one BAN focuses all their attention on - Mr. Lai's Printer Farm - is visually concerning, and it was NOT identified as a destination on our downstream tracking.  So kudos on that.  But to say it is representative of the 40% of 35% is racist and insulting.  Other devices went to places overseas anyone should be PROUD to work with.

But the point of BAN's report is clear.  They do not go after companies that pack and export.  They do not track most of the destinations.  They track my company in several pages.  It's because I spoke out about them.  I believe that is the message here, to make other recyclers afraid to speak up on behalf of the geeks of color, to intimidate those of us who object to racial profiling, who do NOT pay them tribute money via E-Stewards (using an E-Steward company shows prominently on the press release, though the GPS tracking didn't show that to be determinate).

My company baled 95% of the printers we received for shredding - some by E-Stewards, all by R2 certified companies.  Of the FIVE (5%)* our crew found potentially reuse and repairable, we either tested them ourselves or more likely sent them to another R2 company which listed reuse as a potential outcome (not 100% shredder).   It was one of those 5% nice-looking ones that we sent to a USA company, which had listed certified Hong Kong destinations as their partners.  And, notably, one of those BAN and MIT chose to send to us.

When BAN and MIT hide the data we requested since last May, it just makes it hard for us to respond.  BAN plays the Bilbo Baggins Riddle "What (data) have I got in my pocket?"   We did find some of the tracked devices DID go to the Hong Kong EcoPark. If ours did not - and I accept that now - we have to find out who misdirected it (the USA company or the Hong Kong certified company).  Even if it was legal, it may not be acceptable.

For all we know, the device WOULD have been reused and repaired if not but FOR BAN's Sabotage.  I don't open all the halloween candy I buy to make sure no one sabotaged it.  Until now, I doubt anyone has opened a repairable printer and cut up the guts to make it unrepairable.  There's a word for that, but it's not a polite one.

The point is that BAN is a bully and directs its Reports and Press Releases not to enlighten, but to casuse people to fear them, and to pay them tribute.  It is because I read the Report, studied it, tracked devices to different places, made 14 pages of comment and critique, that my company is profiled in the report.  What I want to know is why people at MIT would not see this for what it is.

We did not, NOT export the device.  We send printers we have DETERMINED to be unusable to a shredder, and that is MOST of the printers.  If BAN intended to show we export, they'd choose a printer that sells for ten times scrap value on ebay and Amazon, and they'd make it unrepairable with internal damage.  We did not export even THAT (Jim stated we "exported to Chicago" in his email).  This is a spray-paint job by BAN.  And while our Chicago partner has offered to just let me "push him under the bus" (and claim it wasn't us), I prefer to out this Senator Joe McCarthy.

At long last, NGO, have you no sense of decency?  Have you no shame?

* (Ed correction -. first edition of blog mistakenly reported on 95% not repairable by omitting the word "not". Only 5% of printers at my company have been set aside for potential reuse in 5 years)

Press Release Below.

Secret Tracking Project Finds that Your Old Electronic Waste Gets Exported to Developing Countries 40% of  e-Waste given to Recyclers gets Shipped Illegally to Polluting Operations Overseas

September 15, 2016. Seattle, WA. Utilizing high-tech methods to track high-tech wastes, the environmental watchdog, Basel Action Network (BAN) as part of their e-Trash Transparency Project, funded by the Body Shop Foundation, planted GPS trackers into 205 old printers and monitors and then delivered them to charities and recyclers. The new report, entitled Scam Recycling: e-Dumping on Asia by US Recyclers, revealed that of those that were handed over to American electronics recyclers, 40 percent did not get recycled in the US as expected by customers, but were instead exported to highly-polluting and unsafe operations in developing countries -- mostly in Asia.   "The American public continues to be scammed by unethical companies greenwashing themselves as 'recyclers'," said BAN Executive Director Jim Puckett. "The toxic chemicals released by the crude breakdown of our old electronics in the junkyards in Hong Kong not only harms workers and communities abroad, but comes back to hurt us as well. We are the only developed country in the world that ignores this problem. It's time to stop say 'enough is enough'." Among the findings of the report, BAN found that: 40% of the 152 deliveries to US electronics recyclers went offshore -- mostly to China 96% of the exports are likely to be illegal under international or US law  93% of the US e-waste exports moved to developing countries 75 companies were involved in a chain of transactions that led to export of e-waste.* Many recyclers involved in export made website claims of never exporting "R2" Certified Recyclers exported at greater than average rates, e-Stewards Certified Recyclers at less than average Hong Kong electronics junkyards expose workers and the environment to dangerous toxins such as mercury.  The exported tracked devices, travelled to Hong Kong (37), Mainland China (11), Taiwan (5), Pakistan (4), Mexico (3), Thailand (2), Canada (2), and one each in United Arab Emirates, Togo, Kenya, Cambodia, and the Dominican Republic. MIT's Sensable City Labs worked in partnership with BAN to produce an interactive online map  to show the pathways of all of the 205 trackers. Most of BAN's trackers had found their way via ship and truck to 48 different sites in a semi-rural part of Hong Kong known as New Territories. BAN travelled there and visited the precise locations where the trackers ended up. They found massive volumes of LCD monitors, printers and other electronics being smashed each day and broken apart by hand in hidden junkyards, allowing the release of printer toners, and mercury phosphors easily inhaled by workers both unprotected from, and unaware of, the hazards.   BAN also looked at the electronics certification programs designed to improve ensure recycling management. The "R2" certification program created as a result of an EPA convened multi-stakeholder process has about 5 times more certified recyclers than the e-Stewards program (a more rigorous standard), but it was found that "R2" members had a higher rate of being associated with export than even uncertified recyclers. Recyclers certified to the e-Stewards Standard had the lowest export rate. The e-Stewards Standard was created by the Basel Action Network together with industry leaders. It is designed to be fully consistent with international law and is the only e-recycling program that utilizes tracker technology to verify conformity with the standard. The BAN report calls for the following key recommendations: All consumers and businesses concerned about preventing pollution of the global environment should make exclusive use of e-Stewards Certified Recyclers .   President Obama should sign an executive order to prevent US government e-waste from being exported overseas.  All others can sign petition for this .   Manufacturers, governments and recyclers should commit to full transparency of where they send all of their hazardous electronic waste. Hong Kong government should ban all imports of hazardous e-waste and close the informal New Territories junkyards. Download the report here: http://wiki.ban.org/File:ScamRecyclingReport-web.pdf  (low-resolution ver.) http://wiki.ban.org/File:ScamRecyclingReport-print.pdf  (high-resolution ver.) For more information: Jim Puckett, Executive Director, Basel Action Network Email: jpuckett@ban.org Phone: +1 (206) 652-5555

Desert Toilet Seat and Car Safety Seat Environmental Export Ethics

In the late 1980s, when I was working for a recycling non-profit in Boston, I took a call from a concerned MIT physical plant employee.  The university was doing a good one by replacing several hundred white old-school toilets, replacing them with a water-conservation type of toilet.

It seemed like such a waste, the person said, to throw these in a dumpster bound for a landfill or incinerator.  Did we think there was someplace to take them as a donation?

Used toilets sold in Goma Market (Sahara Desert)

I was recently back from 30 months in Africa.  While in central Cameroon, I'd helped organize a project to dig a hole for a school outhouse (students and teachers, at the time, had to hike off into the weeds of the savanna).  But there was no prospect for running water, and perhaps more importantly, what would the ethics be for donating a water-hungry potty to a country which had serious drinking water issues?  I've posted before about the analogy of flush toilets to high tech, and the thousands of deaths from contaminated water in London and Baltimore ("the Great Stink") when flush-potties put the "toshers" out of business.

We've also considered the ethics of used child car seats, and the "planned obsolescence" vs. "child safety recalls" of that market.  Having recently been back to Africa, I can tell you that car accidents are common, and child safety seats are unheard of.   Donating recalled child safety seats to Africa seems like it might "prime the pump" for local demand.   But when I suggested it, a Vermont housewife said I would be killing African children by giving them sub-standard, recalled, used child safety seats.

My children came to Africa with me, and sat in the back with 2 adults, and no car seats.

Ethical Photojournalism or Manufactured Victims, Packaged Nurture?

2011 Crock of *#%^ Agbogbloshie 

Part of me knows the way American Hillbillies were portrayed.  My kin certainly had a chip on their shoulders.  But on the other hand, I do understand that to run a company or a non profit or NGO or government organization, you gotta do some things that you gotta do.

Environmental writer Dave Currey posted a blog this morning which, I think honestly, takes up the same ethical questions about what I call "nurture packaging" or "victim manufacturing".  It's the first time I've read Currey's blog, and I haven't been much deeper into Environmental Investigation Agency (a non-electronics EIA)  that Twitter or Animal Detectives.

But since I've been dishing out a lot of criticism of photojournalism in the #ewastegate hoax, it's time to take pause and recognize a thoughtful, ethical post about how photography drives fundraising, and how ugly the fundraising business is.

Currey sees it.  And in my interviews with StEP, BAN, and R2 staff, they are aware, too.  The business of "solving a problem" or cause-based fundraising is a tricky ethical maneuver.  At a certain point, "ethical professionals" need to send "ethical passionates" out into the field to raise dough.

My retweets of Currey's blog center on the power of photojournalism, respecting the way it leverages exoticism and nurture, but also calling on ethical scrutiny.  The photos sent out by NGO Basel Action Network in 2009 were used to manufacture a "hoax" victim - Africa's "Eden".  Greenpeace also filmed ludicrous claims (by AMA "journalist" cough-cough Mike Anane) that Agbogbloshie was a lush fishing and swimming greenfield before used electronics were imported.

Where are We on the Ethics Spectrum? 6 Degrees of Environmentalism

What's the purpose of this blog?  I often meet people who share the interest in ethical exports and electronics recycling, and we exchange information, each developing deeper knowledge through the relationships.

But the blog is also a journal.  It can capture my own thinking about a "big story".

And "e-waste" is really not a big story at all.  It's a fairly small part of recycling,  Recycling is really important because it avoids mining and preserves added value.  It's really rude to future generations to burn up limited fossil fuels, warm the planet, and then throw away the metal and plastics and do it over again.  It's really rude to tell a generation of Africans starving for Mass Communications / teledensity that they should buy brand new stuff most cannot afford because our sense of liability - an ethical luxury - comes first.

Throughout the blog there are facts that I share with academics and researchers and policy makers, and then there are places where I get angry and vent - as I'd do in a journal.  What is most important are the big perspectives which I can only comprehend a bite at a time.

Recycling policy becomes a lens to view ethics in a way that observes cross-cultural and economic interest's "spin" on those ethics.

Ethics really have to be understood as coming from a source of good, a right and wrong, poles.  It's possible that the most cynical view of ethics - that it's all evolved psychology and genetic nurture and greed - is true.  We have to be willing to consider it.  But I think an evolved, polished, enlightened Ethics which takes into account evolution and psychology and enlightened self interest is a thing of beauty, a work of art, and a gift to future generations.

Another long intro leads us here: My outline of self interest in international ethics.

[thanks to virtual pal Rafa Font of Belgium for sharing the article by Courtney Martin, The Reductive Seduction of Other Peoples Problems]

1.  The Ethics Illiterate

We tend to call people "evil" in literature, but most of the evil I see in the world is more of an ethical blindness.  People who really just care about something else, about themselves, about money, about pleasure.

There are people who would eat 1,000 endangered species tongues on toast and throw the rest away just for the sense of privilege, power and luxury (and even if cheese tasted better).  But in my experience, assholes aren't really thinking about ethical questions.  They would as soon burn a phone book as a Bible.

The worst problems in the world aren't created by Marvel Comics evil people, but by those who are mostly illiterate in ethics, and don't know how to feel good about sustainability.  The action is evil, the murder is evil.  What's in the evil mind is a waste.

2.  The Ethics Superficial

There are many people who have a general awareness of ethics and are on the right side, they think.  But while they may be literate in right and wrong, they don't really read novels, if you get my drift.

The morality is often a currency which they see has a social value.

They want to be friends with people who are ethical (which is really smart), and they follow the opinions of the tribes they find themselves in.

The Ethical Superficials may evolve into more professional ethics agents, or they may be satisfied to see themselves as ethically superior to Ethical Illiterates, earning an internal "moral currency" for having expressed "politically correct" or "religiously correct" views.

Gods of Emotional Appeal: The Archer's Prayer

Tibetan Archer 1938 wikimedia

Growing up in Western Christian culture, I'm very familiar with the incentives and disincentives offered by the Gods of Emotional Appeal.  You will feel "joy" if you are righteous, or at least "satisfaction".  We are promised sorrow and pain if we sin, or the sins are depicted surrounded with imagery of sadness in the Christian media.

I'm a silent Believer.  I remain religious, or spiritual, since the "born again" experience I had in Arkansas as a pot-smoking teenager.  But from the beginning, it was not an "us vs. them" experience... I was also changed positively (enlightened) by the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao, and refined my beliefs Buddhism.   Buddhist writers described "spiritual materialism" to describe the economy of emotions.  But the quiet, non-evangelical Believer, accomplishes much.  It is the deeds, the karma of her life, which measure the Christian Sage above the greedy, the exploiting, or spiritually wretched.

Ethics.  This blog is about Ethical Environmentalism.  What the truth is, is important.  But Ethics without a belief are as useless as Ethics with wrong "knowledge".  Our time on earth is about choosing aims, aiming, and meeting those aims.  We can't aim and shoot a bow without both gravity and light.  Faith and truth.

Game Theory 3: Monopoly Itch Mite Cure

Part of what makes game theory interesting is the use of analogies to analyze rules.   Gedankenexperiment (Thought experiment) is a game theory approach to philosophy and ethics.   And for an Ethical E-Waste blog, its a way to view a situation from 20,000 feet.

Wikipedia - Schrödinger coined the term Verschränkung (entanglement).

What if one player uses a different set of dice than another player?  If that player won 60% of 1,000 games, you'd want to control for imbalanced dice... but you'd have spent a lot of time playing in order to prove it, so it seems better if both players have to use the same die without the effort to prove one set of dice is faulty.  That requires an umpire, an authority, an NFL, and NBA, a regulator.

In non-democratic communist governments, the authority is itself a monopoly.  Regulators can be paid off, and you can't go to court to appeal weighted the dice.  In capitalism, the use of patents and trademarks create temporary, time-sensitiv,e monopolies... the authorities enforce your monopoly for a limited amount of time, which does promote research and invention.  The use of a combination of government regulators and capitalist corporations is a horrible system, the worst, except for all the other ones.

As this week's thought experiment, lets look at a theoretical entanglement of ethics and patent law.

What about... PermaChiggerInc?

What if a corporation - PermaChigger - cross bred some kind of chigger and itch mite to develop a type of scabies resistant to sulfur, to permathrin, and neem  oil.. resistant to every treatment except their trademarked GMO petrochemical?  The entire world is scratching its collective butt off, and the money rolls in.   The GMO treatment can be manufactured at scale, cheaper to produce and more profitable.  Empty bottles of PermaChigger become as common as litter from bottled water.

That's about the worst capitalist system I can think of.  It's similar to AIDS conspiracy theories of a decade ago, but the AIDS conspiracy doesn't make sense because it kills the clients.  Mite management might make more sense.

Short of being caught contaminating people on purpose, the corporation has engineered itself a guaranteed profit.  They don't even need to do the dirty work of enforcing it, they have government trade commissions and international police to stop the sale of counterfeit and copied product.  I'm not anti-capitalist, and the system here is the one which AIDS and Ebola have the highest chance of being brought under control.

Profit ensues.

Now imagine a Nigerian man, Benson, who has never been to school, from a pidgin speaking corner of an inner city Lagos slum, has the itch.  A six foot six man weighing 260 pounds, he's black as they come and looks scary as all hell when he gets mad.  He has the genetically modified mites, his wife has it, his kids have it, all their neighbors in Lagos are scratching their thighs off.  But they can't afford the Capitalist GMO treatement.  It's not a fatal condition, but life would be a lot better if he thought of a solution.

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.

Morality, Favors, and Contracts

I believe in practicing "thought experiments", like Einstein did with physics, about ethics and morality.   It's something we did in a meaningful freshman philosophy seminar at Carleton College (where I intended to be a philo major... but that's another story).


This week I had a frustrating conversation with a teenager in our family.   He asked me for a favor dropping him off somewhere by car.  It reminded me I needed someone to go to our Fair Trade Recycling Intern Adelaide's apartment to bring my bicycle back home, and I proposed an exchange - I drop him off at practice, and he brings my bike back from her apartment.

Parents of teenagers know the slippery slope of negotiations.  Below is a lesson in how to negotiate, which can be applied to contracts, etc.

1. Even though no one knows I do it, even though it's not appreciated, I silently do this favor.  It is not even "for God" (though that's a legitimate inspiration).  I'm just wired to do this favor for someone who will owe me nothing, not even realize I did it.  My left hand knoweth not what the right hand giveth.
2. Even though you appear to have nothing, and are unlikely to ever be in a position to help me back, I do this favor, and you say "thank you".  The lion releases the mouse.
3. I do this favor knowing that you have some power, position, possibility of one day returning this favor to me.   It would be foolish of me to refuse.
4. I do this favor and ask for another favor in return.
5. I do this favor conditionally, that you do a specific favor for me in return.  If you don't, I won't.
6. I accept your favor, but I decline doing a favor for you.
7. I take, steal, or force the favor from you.

Religion, morality, ethics, and contract law.  These social exchanges, between billions of people, occur every second.  Some of us profit from it.  We are more likely to profit the farther down the scale we go.  Society is rigged to put the brakes on that, and to look upon us "favorably" the higher on the scale we behave.

How does a Recycler compete in ethical terms?   What happens if you behave ethically, but the person you are exchanging favors with is accused of being a bad actor?  A primitive, unsavory, wire burning informal heathen?   Does your best favor become a negative?

Does Spotify Turn Pandora into MySpace?

I have been an absolute lover and fan of Pandora Radio for years.  The music service is free, and you enter in an artist you like.   The artist may play, but as likely you will hear some other artist which people who liked the first artist are likely to also appreciate.  If you don't like a song, click thumbs down, and that gets factored into the future of your playlists on the station.

I love Neil Young, discover Greg Brown.  I find out that my dad's not just weird, that people who like Gordon Lightfoot also like Uncle John's Band by Grateful Dead (without liking other deadhead tunes quitesomuchthanks)... You can't choose what song to play next, but absent that choice it's like a radio station, background music.  I discovered some of my favorite songs during the past 5 years via Pandora.  Became a paid subscriber in January for my birthday present.

Now Spotify:  Similar to Pandora, but also like limewire or napster in it's display and order-by-artist-by-song selection, but legal and supported by ads.

(Note:  Recording Industry was a dumb idiot for not immediately embracing the technology and creating Columbia Record Club for big-value-teaser-downloads in the 1990s, the industry could have been Facebook now but chose to fight the last tape-recorder war over copyright.  ITunes finally kind of caught on but does kind of a lousy job in my opinion).

Love Spotify so far.  But would I have discovered MIA Paper Planes (a gem I discovered on Pandora) or Avalanches Frontier Psychiatrist (Boy Needs Therapy)?

(Note: savvy commenter already suggests grooveshark.com)

Ethics of Religion: Imagine You're Jesus

(at the risk of offending absolutely everyone... this is about thinking).

Imagine You Are Jesus, and You've recently arrived back in Heaven.  You are looking down at the world, and You have some followers, some people who are genuinely enlightened by the golden rule, loving their neighbors as themselves, bearing fruit one hundred fold.

You also see about a million people who are just awful.  Just the worst.  Cruel, murdering, thieving, a million people who kill children.

Two of Your followers, named Pastor West and Pastor East, feel heartbroken by the badness.  West and East both live by Your golden rule, they both give away their possessions to help the needy, and they both try to be perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect.

Then Pastor West speaks up.  He tells the million violent and angry people that You, Jesus, spoke to him personally, and gave him a saintly prophetic vision... that You, Jesus, had told him Your plans for a place called Hell.  Agonizing, atrocious, flesh eating fire which never ends, forever and ever and ever, and that you were going to throw those million sinners into a firey doom.  And that you spoke of a place called Heaven, where all people who believe in You and change their ways will live in Joy and harmony.

Of course, You said no such thing.  Your allegories of gnashing of teeth were intended to describe a life trying to bless itself with material goods which pass.  Pastor West weeps tears of joy at the feeling of "Your" words, adding emphasis and importance to the "vision".

But... Imagine it appears to work sometimes.  Of the million sinners, imagine that half of them pause, fearing death and Hell, and that they lay down their weapons and stop killing children...  Hundreds of thousands are spared, as armies and gangs set down their weapons, and pray for salvation from the Vision of Hell.

On the day Your two followers meet You in heaven, they each plead their case...

Monkeys Running the Environmental Zoo

Ok, this is a post which I've worked on in draft form and set aside for several months. It's complicated.  Today the environmental community is split down the middle, whether to reform the international trade in used electronics with R2 and other Fair Trade standards, or to boycott ewaste export trade via E-Stewards.   Having posted my own "simple" "Ten Myths about "E-Waste", I wanted something for thoughtful people who have longer attention spans.  Debate is fun.

One of my favorite books of the past ten years is Bill Bryson's non-fiction "A Short History of Nearly Everything".  I admire Bryson's ability to provide so much infomation in such meaningful context without seeming pedantic or dense. He describes the formation of the planets from the perspectives of the early physicists, makes geologists as exciting as movie stars, and recaptures "eureka!" through the eyes of the discoverer. It's an opera of science; reality seems as bizarre as Lost or X-Files.  The anecdotes are entertaining and get the point across. I wish I could write about "electronics recycling" markets that way.



Bryson tells the story of the formation of the solar system, evolution of life, etc. in a sweet little two-day read.  The green drama between BAN and NRDC on the one side and R2, EPA, ISRI, UNCTAD and WR3A should be simple.

My dispute with Basel Action Network has nothing to do with pollution, and nothing to do with who cares more about people in the developing world.  There are just two ways to get metal - recycling or mining.  BAN agrees that metal mining is a disaster.  

Here is one of dozens of exasperating articles on the web BAN has inspired, with a tagline "When Recycling Isn't Green".  The "Downside of Upgrading" post in Blue Planet, Green Living appeared February 2, 2010 by Caryn GreencloseAuthor: Caryn Green Name: Caryn Green
Email: cgreen37@hotmail.com
Site: http://www.blueplanetgreenliving.comAbout: See Authors Posts (16)... It quotes BAN from the top, and the author takes them as an authority, stating for the record that the "vast majority" of computers are exported, and that by far, most of those go to "burn villages".

“Most electronics recyclers do not recycle the material at all, but simply throw it into a seagoing container and export it to destinations like China, India and Africa,” said Basel Action Network’s Sarah Westervelt. “In these developing countries, your old computer or TV will be smashed, melted, and burned in highly dangerous and polluting operations by a desperately impoverished and unprotected workforce.”

BAN is sincere, I guess.  But the marketing for the boycott approach is getting ahead of the science.  The propaganda campaign is leveraging white guilt for green outcomes, with photos of brown kids hanging out at grey landfills.  They feel justified, probably, by their distrust in business motives or outcomes of trade.

But R2, EPA, ISRI, UNCTAD and WR3A are a strange set of villains for BAN to wage war against.  None of us advocates for disposal of toxics in third world landfills.  Part of consensus is to stop impugning the motives of people who disagree with us.  I think I've said plenty about them being wrong, or having unintended consequences, and probably make them out to be this side of arrogant.  But I don't think I've accused them of more than attraction to job security when it comes to their motives.  They want less pollution overseas.

The question is not whether but how the junk stuff got to the landfills where the BAN kids are flaming it, and in what percentage?  BAN's logic is that if they require more red tape, they cannot be as responsible for the residue at the landfills.  Someone with more permissive standards has to be responsible.  <`2013- Maybe home-grown?  Lagos households with TV in 2007 = 6.9M?>

The patient needs a second opinion. China is starving for plastics and metals, and Africa is hungry for computers.  If most recyclers are bad, and most recycling is bad (both contentions of the BluePlanetGreenLiving" post), then most of us should not use our local recycling option, right?  Friendly fire, mining wins.  Bill Bryson uses analogy to make reasoning and math more accessible... let's try that.


How can stricter standards create a bigger mess?  

Parable of the Banana Famine:

The zoo of international faces, the menagerie of gadgets...

BAN requires zookeepers to peel bananas before giving them to monkeys, to avoid peels in the cage.  A clean cage is a healthier environment, and they suspect people are throwing empty peels in the cage.  But the monkeys are still famished because BAN's zookeepers don't actually peel many of the bananas.   They keep the cage free of peels by destroying the bananas, rather than training the monkeys to pick up their own peels.

Soon enough, visitors to the zoo start to feed the monkeys, and who knows what they are throwing in the cage.  Chaos results, and an even trashier cage.   BAN reacts to the lawlessness with a campaign to end monkey cage abuse.  Everyone in town is ashamed of our zoo.  So the best and most well intentioned of the visitors stop throwing any food into the cage.

California is the hippy dippy result.  California destroys lots of bananas.  Their banana-waste diversion program subsidizes banana disposal...  But like a sorcerer's apprentice, the state pays more for banana waste than the value of a #6 ripe banana.  California becomes a banana-magnet, a "giant sucking sound" affecting markets in neighboring states, an SB20 robocop funded out of the pockets of California taxpayers.

So I suggested that California could reduce its banana recycling costs by diverting  peeled bananas, prepared to BAN standards, to feed the monkeys.  I try to explain that BAN's problem is the peels, not the bananas, and I begin to make some headway. BAN's inactive zookeepers, who don't have state funding, can throw away unpeeled bananas, and we'll feed the monkeys from California's subsidized system... with some revenue to spare.

But triple-hypened regulators are an over-worked and risk-averse bunch.

The head California banana regulator worries about bad press over the monkey cages, and anyway, he's got a full time job trying to catch people not shredding their bananas and still taking state funds, or bringing bananas from Arizona, or making sure the tonnage of smashed bananas is cared for in Yuma Arizona or Mexicali Mexico.  It's a full-time job, checking individual banana origins with dog-eared telephone books in a medieval IRS audit.   California is too busy enforcing that the right number of bananas get shredded, and verifying the weight of banana waste, and of course also doesn't want to be responsible for the zoo's cage.  So California actually requires their zookeepers to smash each banana, and hires bureaucrats to track the slippery paperwork, and to track that the end markets do NOT include zoos... it's admittedly very thankless work.

Along the way, someone with a friend in Europe always peeps in with the precautionary principle... even IF I succeeded in feeding bananas to monkeys, the monkeys will go poop.  Poop gets on the floor of the cage.  You shouldn't feed a monkey until you come up with a plan for the poop.

* * * * *

Now, those familiar with my blog know that in describing the evolution of environmental standards, am I NOT calling Africans, Asians and Latin Americans "hungry monkeys".  My entire point is that the technicians overseas are being treated as such (note who is 'running the zoo').  I looked for an online image of the scientist Ape Zera from that terrific scene in "Escape from the Planet of the Apes"... having revealed her intelligence, she discloses her ability to speak with that famous line... "Because I loathe bananas!"  These are technicians, technicians who become engineers, and whose kids may grow up to be scientists.  In the propaganda war between well meaning environmental organizations, factories far superior than anything existing in the USA have been tarred with the label of unsophisticated "wire burning villages".  I was hoping for an Animal Farm effect.  Mark Twain has been called a racist for using the n-word to describe Jim in Huckleberry Finn.

Setting the banana peels aside, here is my business analysis of the junk computer monitors BAN shows in Ghana and Guiyu.  I'm able to do this because I am engaged in the trade, I have experience, I want to do the right thing, I follow up on my results, and dammit, I won't shred a banana in sight of a hungry monkey.

Q:  How do bad monitors get overseas?

Follow the money. Start with shipping costs.  Someone had to ship them.  There are several online sources of freight quotes (they also give you a picture of how complicated it actually is to complete international shipping paperwork).  Here is one.  My door-to-door rates for the containerload to Dakar Senegal (WR3A video) was about $7000, including taxes and inland freight. Who pays the FREIGHT?

Answer 1:   Some African businessperson paid $6000 to ship 1000 pieces ($6 each) and then delivered them to the landfill, where the 1000 pieces are broken for $1.65 each in copper.  The importer has taken a loss of $6000 - $1650 or ($4,350)... plus in most cases paid the USA shipper for the television or monitor, about $4 each.  Net loss to Ghanaian = $8,350 per container, and the apparently insane Ghana Businessman does this over and over again... actually accounting for 80% of all the e-waste recycled in the United States, by paying $8 each for $1.65 worth of copper which he gets somehow from the "burn village".

Answer 2:  Assume there's at least a breakeven percentage on the container, then at least 70% (700) CRT monitors must have been sold at $15 each to cover for the loss in shipping plus the loss from scrap ($4 paid -$1.65 scrap).   So up to 300 bad ones can be on each container (if the importer is satisfied with breaking even.)

Answer 3:  Maybe the used electronics once worked in the developing country, but have worn out?  Someone should at least look into that, right?  Someday the 700 monitors used will break or cease to be economically repairable (and low cost imports does affect the willingness to repair). And maybe they are importing so many, and demand is so high, that even a 30% residue rate makes a big mess. For that matter, brand new monitors imported will someday wear out.  (But the precautionary principle shouldn't keep people in the dark...)

The breakeven point in China is different than in Ghana,  and the tolerance for bad units is higher, because of lower shipping costs.  Shipping is cheaper to Hong Kong because of the "empty seats" on the sea container vessels (ships have to go back to Hong Kong with empty containers to get more Chinese made stuff for Americans).  You can find container rates for China at $2000 (with inland freight) rather than $6,000+ to ports in Africa.

Because China has the factories that made the monitors, they also have a higher refurbishing rate for whatever monitors show up.

You cannot sell many working used monitors for $15 in China... they'd rather use it as a $5 core and turn it into a $30 TV.  China doesn't buy working used monitors for resale, because China is becoming a net generator of used monitors.  China now ships the the refurbished ones to Africa.  (In special "import for re-export zones", some of these factories were considered legal.  But for the most part it is illegal, because the Chinese communist party owns the new CRT factory, and doesn't like competition.)

So if the value of the working ones is only $5 (for SKD cores) in Hong Kong, and the scrap copper is still $1.65, you still could not achieve BAN's 80% bad rate and get $2320 to cover the $2000 shipping costs.  for more than $0.32 per monitor.  If you are paying at least $1.65 (scrap price), plus shipping, that's $3650 per container or $3.65 per monitor.

(Good * $5) + (Scrap * $1.65)    =  $3.65

Good = [(2.21 - Scrap) * 1.65] / 5

1 = [(2.21 - scrap) * 1.65] / 5

which I think calculates out to scrap = 41%  possible or 410 per load...

BAN and WR3A are both concerned about 41% scrap.   We don't ship to China because it's illegal, but also because the prices make this a possibility.

WR3A's "fair trade" solution requires the USA exporter to first document that they remove AT LEAST 30% of the CRTs domestically, before shipping, and to recycle those here.  This doesn't guarantee better than 70% good product, but it makes it more likely (breaking good ones and shipping bad ones makes little sense).  Second, the WR3A importer must reconcile each load and report how many incidental breakage or bad ones.  If they provide glass recycling records, they get paid $3 each (enough to make a profit after copper scrap).  The incentive for fraud would be for the importer to over-report bad ones, selling some at $15 but reporting they were bad.  Still, WR3A exceeds 85% reuse, and our better members exceed 90%.

Then WR3A pays the importer for any and every bad one, which means that if we are still making $1.50 per monitor, we have to be doing better than 80% reuse.  And when we ship to a more expensive port - like Penang, Malaysia, the breakeven is even harder to achieve with bad loads.

Meanwhile, the documentation on the bad residue shows that the importer is not only providing 85% good product to people in their country - they are also creating a domestic recycling infrastructure.   Our longest relationships include buyers who now collect scrap generated in their home countries, and recycling operations which are ISO14001 and ISO9000 certified, have legal import permits, and meet R2 compliance requirements.

BAN still maintains that export for repair is illegal.  They presume that "fully functional" and "tested working" have a better rate than the 85%, which is far from certain.  Chinese refurbishing factories can't work with Japanese CRTs, even working, and since China is a net generator of CRTs, sending them working Japanese CRTs is actually worse than repairable non-working Korean CRTs.

Here is the catch-22.  The best possible conservative scenario is to ship "fully functional" units, selected by BAN standards, but sell them to the most sophisticated manufacturer takeback sorting, i.e. WR3A standards (working Japanese CRTs removed), sold to the WR3A importer.  However, the most professional factories still upgrade the units, and BAN says that the upgrade or refurbishing (making the unit nicer than it was before) may involve removal of parts... e.g. upgrading a 30g working hard drive with a 300g hard drive, or replacing 256k RAM with gig RAM, or in the case of monitors, upgrading the boards and making them new-in-box.  BAN therefore appears to maintain that the factory which has done everything right and created a domestic recycling infrastructure has crossed a line into illegality by upgrading "fully functional" items.

When I brought up this Catch-22 or unintended consequence (directing sales away from the best and brightest importers), BAN suggested that the tubes be removed from the cases... Pre-peel the bananas.

This requires a repair person in the USA to remove any parts that might be replaced or upgraded.  For example, this would include the 120volt power supply, which is useless in many countries, as well as tuners and capacitors.  BAN has recommended that the entire casing of the monitor be removed, and the CRT be sent bare if it is going to be rebuilt.

- Outcome #1:  The bare tubes are more fragile and have a higher percentage of toxic residue which must then be recycled (CRT glass) by weight than the WR3A shipments.

- Outcome #2:  Actually, none of the E-Stewards is practicing the tube stripping.  Most of them are destroying the CRTs in the USA and depriving the marketplace of $20 video display units.  This leads to shortages, which are filled by less reputable exporters.  Those exporters provide the waste at the landfills, which BAN then photographs children next to, providing job security.

- Outcome #3:  Eliminates Shangri's job.  Remember the proud young African tech from Congo in the WR3A video?

WR3A requires that any incidental breakage, which occurs more in the BAN method but occurs to some degree in either method, is documented to be recycled glass-to-glass, and the importer is treated fairly, i.e. financially compensated for the recycling costs of the incidental breakage.  This gives us good records.
. . . . . .

Darn.   This post, I've been working on it for months, and it's STILL too long.  I don't write as well as Bill Bryson.  The more technically adept and scientific my posts, the less accessible they are.  And the more banana - monkey -zoo my posts are, the more I fall into the oversimplification.  I woke up at 3 AM today and have now spent almost 2 hours on this post... this is not a sustainable operation.  But it's an ethical one, and the ethics of e-waste are what makes it interesting.

By the way, speaking of Mark Twain, he has finally had his autobiography re-released without edits.  It is coming out in three volumes.  I like his quote about Cecil Rhodes, the mining magnate who created the Rhodes Scholarship.. ("I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake")




I think I'm in a scene from the marvelous British comedy Fawlty Towers (a MUST rent is "Communication Problems" episode - "I speak English very well.  I learned it from a book.")

Bill Bryson, Mark Twain, Cecil Rhodes, John Cleese and Zera from the Planet of the Apes...  and Manuel. It has taken me months to piece this post together, this short history of nearly everything about ewaste, and now that my family is in France (they get more vacation weeks than I do), I can finally sew up the story of e-waste exports.  I fly to meet them in Barcelona.