Tomorrow's Sunday Sermon is drawn from Hans Christian Anderson's Tale, "
The Girl Who Trod On The Loaf".
O E-Waste Activists... There will be gnashing.of.teeth@hell !
"There was once a girl who trod on a loaf to avoid soiling her shoes, and the misfortunes that happened to her in consequence are well known. ...[S]he was a poor child, but proud and presuming, and with a bad and cruel disposition. When quite a little child she would delight in catching flies, and tearing off their wings, so as to make creeping things of them.
If you have never read Hans Christian Anderson, don't start your kids with this tale. I read it at age 10, and it has always been on my short list of nightmares. It's a story about a girl named Ingen, from humble beginnings, who finds fortune from a wealthy woman, but who begins to look down on other dirty people and to set herself above them. She is given a loaf of bread to bring to her hungry parents, but rather than take a long route, uses the loaf to cross a mud puddle. She sinks into a 3 page Bosch painting of hell, which is mainly populated by things that disgusted her and things she did which made the world more disgusting. She hears the world above, and is shocked by her own reputation, even among those she thought admired her. She is finally freed, long after everyone she knew is gone, by a girl crying for her, which triggers Ingen to weep. At first she weeps for herself, which doesn't free her... It is only when the girl that cried is an old woman, and she remembers Ingen again, that Ingen cries for someone besides herself...
Despite tales of "collateral damage", there is never a tear of remorse from BAN, from NRDC, from CBS... not even a
Platonic Apology. The
E-Waste Priory, with shiny consciences, robed in green, sing their own praises to Euro idealists. Before them, on a leash, they show the
muddy poster orphan. Knowing his place, he never speaks a word, never asks for a share of the royalty on his photos. Geeks of color are unlikely to sue. Maybe they were kinda polluters anyway...
The Priory's anti-ewaste campaign against Butterfly Geeks repeats a tired dynamic.
Overstate the problem,
omit data,
mount a poster child,
attract funding from industrial complex (shredders, anti-gray-market, dictators),
tax citizens,
destroy value, and
arrest bad examples. It retraces wrong steps society has taken before, from witch trials to segregation to
lynching... all means to a noble end. Through withdrawn import permits and seized sea containers, they pull apart, shredding the wings of the refurbishing industry.
In the long run, those NGOs rationalize,
their standard will bring
better jobs,
better lives, and
less pollution (at least to refurbishers, if not to mining communities). They are very, very certain of their moral path. From the safety of their cathedral, their Green See offices, they care about the muddy people, and their brand of compassion betters the world in the long run. They go on "waste tourism" trips, snap shots of the unwashed,. They wish and aspire on the recycling ghetto's behalf, that they will "leapfrog" to a shiny city on a hill, and grow back more beautiful wings. Like the PTL Club prays for gays to become straight.
What is really bringing significant value to the "ghettos"? Reuse and refurb of high tech equipment.
"Third-party companies have built $100+ million per year businesses in buying used computer equipment, refurbishing it, and selling or leasing it out to someone else" [CBRonline.com 2005]
Or, from our Tale,
"...Her mistress said, “you ought to go home again, and visit your parents, Inge, and I will give you a large wheaten loaf to take to them, they will be glad to see you, I am sure.”
The Watchdogs are very sensitive to public revelations of unintended consequences. Lip service - that "the perfect not be the enemy of the good". But they are very, very
proud of the e-steward certification, the "perfect" recycling standard they have laid claim to.
They say it is the only "legal" standard, but charge you money just to look at it.
"So Inge put on her best clothes, and her new shoes, drew her dress up around her, and set out, stepping very carefully, that she might be clean and neat about the feet, and there was nothing wrong in doing so. But when she came to the place where the footpath led across the moor, she found small pools of water, and a great deal of mud, so she threw the loaf into the mud, and trod upon it, that she might pass without wetting her feet.
They select an
end point, a recycler who pays for the endorsement. Those who pay expect to see repercussions on their competitors. So BAN.org runs with a story that the large, sustainable, non-mining, ISO, recycling, white box factories are "illegal" and "polluting". Their end point justifies the means.
"But just as she placed one foot on the bread and lifted the other up, the loaf sank in deeper and deeper, carrying her down until she disappeared entirely, and nothing could be seen but a black, bubbling pool! That's the story."
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| I speak for the geeks |
The anti-recycling publicity (
recycler bites environment) creates
cognitive risk in the environmental community, leading to wild goose chases of "waste tourism". Shredding companies financially benefit. Planned Obsolescence interests benefit. Environmentalists: what happened to organized religion, what has happened in medicine, and what has happened in vigilante lynch mobs, could happen to us. Our higher power of best intentions, our spiritual materialism, may lead us to
trod on a loaf if it gets us to our destination and is more convenient than getting our feet wet in the actual "murky" market of the emerging economies. Anxiously seeking to prosecute, without benefit of diagnosis, is reckless. Like a cub scout applying a tourniquet, E-Stewards need med schooling.
Any well-meaning misdiagnosis does more harm than good. It leads eventually to backlash, to Tea Party distrust of regulatory immunizations. It can lead to distrust of even enormously beneficial policies - like the end of leaded gasoline, which cut lead poisoning in urban children by more than 50%.
"At least we meant well, we THOUGHT Indonesia was burning the computers"
Our environmental community, from Silent Spring Garden Club to 350.org, must see the passion we have harnessed as a weapon to be wielded carefully.
Primum non nocere
