Constructive Fair Trade Recycling Breakthrough

So where do we go from here?

"Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it."
-- Mark Twain

"Loyalty to the environment always.  Loyalty to the environmentalists when they deserve it."  ---- Robin Ingenthron 

Below is a letter which I'd like to say I just received from the Basel Action Network and Electronic Takeback Campaign.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Dear Robin, 

Our organization is very unhappy with your characterization of us, in your blog and public addresses.   Basel Action Network is driven by a mission of protecting the world's poor from externalization of toxics and toxic processes.   If a recycling process is going to permanently poison the groundwater, or pose risk to young mothers and children, BAN will not be intimidated.  The Basel Convention is an international treaty which recognizes the risks faced by the poor when the cost of toxics disposal rises, and we have been one of the sole organizations which holds the USA accountable for that standard. 

With that said, we have studied the allegations which you have made, and we are determined to behave as morally and as accurately as possible.    The three specific cases you have raised - of the arrest of Joseph Benson in England, of the seizure of goods from Medi-com of Egypt, and the unfair and defamatory characterization of shipments from Gordon Chiu's company to Semarang, Indonesia, appear to be something our organization should listen to and learn more about.  If it is true that these traders were unfairly profiled, or treated unfairly, based on BAN's characterization of the export market, we want to learn from their experiences, reassess our roles, and grow from it.

Just as your statements have been hurtful to our staff and volunteers, we recognize that statistics BAN has used, irregardless of our intentions, may have created collateral damage or been hurtful to genuine reuse and repair businesses in emerging markets.  We don't know that to be true, but we take the allegation seriously.  If our organization has said anything which has led to the arrest or seizure of goods from a legitimate business in the developing world, our organization will investigate, learn, and if appropriate, make amends. 

The studies you have cited about reuse, and the percentage of waste we filmed which was not imported but generated in these developing countries, raise genuine questions we were not able to consider when we began this campaign.  We are dedicated to the truth, and agree that effective policy must be  supported by facts.  With our combined expertise, we believe that Basel Action Network and Fair Trade Recycling can achieve a better outcome than if we continue with the he-said, she-said dialectic.   Let's improve on the quality of goods shipped, legally and ethically, without either obfuscating or apologizing for genuine pollution, nor mis-characterizing the efforts of entrepreneurs in these developing countries. 

Sincerely,

_______________________________________________________________________________
 This would deserve my loyalty:

Yes, this would be a really great letter to receive... it would deserve my loyalty, it would make them genuine environmentalists.   I've been hurt for standing up for innocent friends.  I nearly lost lynchpins in my $3M business.  I've had to defend myself from the assumption that anyone against BAN must be in favor of poisoning children.  The defamation was not just to my friends, it was to my business and its employees.

No.  But in the same vein, BAN, by being in favor of HR2284 and other conservative anti-trade policies, is not "in favor" of racial profiling, or Interpol arresting people who have purchased 90% working equipment.

If BAN could feel secure enough in their position to publicly address the allegations, and to actually consider the possibility that Joseph Benson, Gordon Chiu, and Hamdy Moussa, were innocent... If they would at least take down the "trophies" of press coverage when these men were hanged in a court of environmental tweetery... I could lay down my pen.

I invite them to write a letter from me.  We could each sign one another's letter, and it would be a huge success at the Vermont Fair Trade Recycling Summit.  They would steal the show.

We have to air the debate publicly try to arrive at a truer mark than "80% of e-waste is exported".  When you get a celebrity journalist to endorse your statistic, it's not totally your fault.  But when you see the stat run like a virus from celeb to celeb, at some point the victory must seem cold if the lives of innocents are trampled.

Such a letter would allow me to respond in kind by recognizing BAN's intentions with the E-Stewards program, without feeling that I was selling out people I genuinely think are innocent of most of the charges attributed to them.   I would see hope that the Watchdogs are willing to admit to the possibility of "collateral damage", to entertain the idea that they've made reckless accusations, and I would be invested in helping them understand this world trade better than they have.

I think Mike Enberg might have the guts to do this, and he'd find why Jim Puckett found me such a  friend 7-8 years ago.  At FTR, we don't know who calls the shots on the West Coast.  We know what keeps them from looking closely at collatoral damage.  If my writing has hurt someone somewhere in the world, I'd want to know the possibility.

Meriam-Webster on "Stewardship":   The conducting, supervising, or managing of something;especially : the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care <stewardship of natural resources>

"Winning" the War on Diversity, Alabama Style

Howdy, I growed up in Arkansas, and am always keeping an eye out on our state ranking. Alabama has usually kept out of the fray in the fight between 49th and 50th rank between Mississippi and Arkansas.  But, as The Economist observes, a new Immigration Law in Alabama may succeed where teenage pregnancy and ignorance has failed.  FTA

ALABAMA’S immigration law, boasted Micky Hammon, an Alabama legislator and one of its co-authors, “attacks every aspect of an illegal immigrant’s life. They will not stay in Alabama…This bill is designed to make it difficult for them to live here so they will deport themselves.” It is not, however, designed to introduce visiting executives from Mercedes-Benz, which employs thousands at its factory in the state, to the pleasures of Alabama’s jails. But that is what happened to Detlev Hager, who was caught in November driving in Tuscaloosa with only German ID on him.

The article describes how the Alabama legislator "shrewdly included a severability clause, ensuring that if a court strikes down or prohibits one part of the law, the rest remains in effect."  My God, it's Brilliant!

...Mr Hammon’s fond hope—that illegal immigrants will leave—seems to have come true. Anecdotal reports suggest that thousands of Latinos, legal as well as illegal, have left Alabama. Farmers complain of rotting crops and building companies of rising costs, both because there are too few workers. Samuel Addy, an economist at the University of Alabama, estimates the law’s total cost—taking into account productivity declines, increased enforcement cost, and declines in aggregate consumer spending and tax revenue since so many workers have left—in the billions.

The Chicago Tribune reports Addy's estimated cost to Alabama at $10.8 billion.  This is similar to the outcome expected from another "good theory", about e-waste recycling, championed by a group of shredding companies in support of the Green Thompson anti-export bill.  Their idea is that if we eliminate exchange of goods and services, the USA will create jobs.  

The idea may or may not have a certain local merit (if you work at a shredding company in California).  But shredding money generally doesn't increase payroll.   Like the anti-immigration bill in Alabama, the economic theory won't pass the straight-face test on its economic merits.  But it nevertheless finds political fuel from the basest American instincts, as it becomes tinged with the latent passions of jealousy and racism.  Some people think that money coming into their state is not the answer - that their boats will only rise if they vote other peoples' boats to sink.

The theory is, if you stop trading with 83% of the world, and in particular the 3 billion people who are getting online internet at ten times the rate of the developing world, using used display units and other "non-obsolete" surplus which doesn't obey "Moore's law" of obsolescence, USA jobs will result.  All you have to do is turn $100 billion dollars of repairable IT equipment upgraded every year into $1 billion dollars of scrap.  Sit back and watch as the jobs arrive faster than Alabama White Collar Cotton Pickers.



It's an old lesson, retold from a letter in 1865, written by a former slave to his former Tennessee slave owner (republished on the web this week, e.g. Huffington Post).

It's a lesson Alabama is re-learning, as the immigrants walk away from the fields and leave crops to rot.  It's a lesson Basel Action Network brought to us when they wrote letters to Malaysia objecting to Samsung Corning using USA CRT cathode ray tube cullet to make new recycled CRTs... Malaysia decided they could get all the CRT cullet they needed from Japan and Korea, thanks much.  And it's a lesson BAN brought to us again when BAN attacked contract manufacturing factories.  Remember, those are the "big secret factories" which upgrade CRT displays by the thousands per day for affordable use in the mideast and Africa (CRTs withstand heat better than LCDs).  The factories are still there, and still buying... they just are not buying from the USA.  Thanks.   That's going to create more jobs here in Vermont when I turn the $200K we used to get from reuse into -minus -$30K in CRT glass cullet.

There is something in Jourdan Anderson's letter to confederate Colonel P.H. Anderson, which seems to repeat itself in the history of trade between immigrants in Alabama and Geeks of Color in overseas refurbishing and recycling markets...

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson.