Vermont E-Waste Recycler Accused of Burying Hunter Biden Hard Drive in CEO's Front Yard

 [April 1, Middlebury, Vermont]

Early on April first, Drones from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources - in constant surveillance of Good Point Recycling - provided shocking photos of the largest e-waste dump in the United States.

Focus material - data - was being landfilled, and on the CEO's own personal property.

"Honest, we just thought we were digging up collapsed orangeburg sewer pipe," said the Bristol Vermont excavating company owner, Steve.

But when the pipe was replaced, in a ten foot deep excavation, the excavator saw Ingenthron place a hard drive, floppy disk, zip drive, and a letter and post it note in the deepest part of the sewage-rinsed  yard hole.  They were placed carefully, with double zip-locked bags for protection.

"Dumping e-waste," said ANR staffer Karen Krabapple, who pilots the drones from her home during pandemic lockdown, "is a crime in Vermont."

The Economist Gets It: Modern Slum Nariobi

Early in 2012, I wrote about the "pixelized slums" in Lima Peru, from the inside, and showed the OECD slums (Mexico, Japan) from the satellite beside the non-OECD slums in Delhi (Useless Lists of Jobs Beneath Wealthy People).

In its expose on Nairobi (where Fair Trade Recycling sent 3 representatives to a UNEP conference last March), the Economist gives readers a taste of entrepreneurism, rich and salty, in the free markets of Africa's largest shantytown.  "Upwardly Mobile Africa: Boomtown Slum"has incredible photos by Piers Benatar/Panos, taking us inside "a day in the economic life of Africa's biggest shanty-town."

Piers Bneatar photo of private ambulance entrepreneurs in Nairobi (Economist.com) Fair Use/ description

It's easy to take a photo in a tough part of town and use it to simplify a continent.  The Economist takes lots of different photos, not seeking to prove an a priori angle, but to bring us closer to understanding the complex.

The Economist shows an exploding fresco of creativity, of nuance, of good-enough affordability, of people living so close side by side one another that they have a communal interest in peace.  And up close, we see the same seeds of economy that hatched in Franklin's Philadelphia, in Gou's Taipei, in Tokyo and Seoul...