The Ptolemy-Liability Trap: Simplified Recycling Lifecycle Narratives Tend to Revolve Around You

The Vermont free-mail, coupon-funded newspaper "Hometown" is published and mailed by the Burlington Free Press - which, with its Headliner newspaper, follows the opposite, paywall approach, online. So I'm in a bit of a quandary in presenting the snapshot, below, of the opening paragraphs of the article. Well, it's a fair use claim, and also it's common practice for newspapers to show the "lede" (opening paragraphs), so here's what catches my attention this morning.

Burlington Free Press Thanksgiving "Hometown" Edition

Joel Banner Baird of Burlington Free Press may well have started a "recycling" story for the same reason that @AdamMinter told me those stories normally appear around holidays.... they are easy to write, require little more than a google page one of research, and seem to appeal to everyone. They are not time sensitive, so a reporter can write it a week ahead, and get home for the holidays faster. But at least in the opening paragraphs, Baird bluntly avoids the normal "gotcha" narratives common in holiday journalism (someone made millions of dollars recycling trash was the go-to in the 1980s, your recyclables didn't really get recycled in the 1990s, lather-rinse-repeat for every buyers-market, sellers-market cycle). It leads, but does not bleed.

The opening interview with Michael Noel (nice holiday namesake) of TOMRA, the master-redemption center recycling provider and owner of most supermarket reverse-vendor container machines, avoids falsely choosing between either "It was the best of times."  

...Or, "It was the worst of times".

Which is the most environmentally sustainable Container for my holiday beer?

Michael Noel tells Joel Banner Baird "The short answer is, it's complicated". That is an honest answer to the decades of environmentalists (spoilt brat) privileged demands to "choose" the "best" beer container, vs. the equally misguided alt-right "recycling is Bulls**t" waste-makers. Both camps are uber-susceptible to cognitive dissonance (or perhaps vice versa, those prone to cognitive dissonance probably lean toward extreme positions). The more they choose one answer (only use this one vs. nothing matters, environmentalists are wrong), the louder they both get. Outrage is not Expertise.

[more]

First "Fan Mail" from Secondhand, Right To Repair in Connecticut

Got a letter from a resident in Connecticut this morning, who had just finished reading Adam Minter's new book "Secondhand".  I won't expect many of them, but figured I could be public in my response as to why Connecticut is the ONLY state in the Northeast we do NOT collect used electronics from.

The history has to do with the regulators who wanted to apply hazardous "Universal Waste Rule" regulations to used electronics, effectively classifying "Secondhand" as "Waste" under RCRA. A regulator once told me he believed he could legally take away my smart phone if it was "non-working".  

Here's the response to our fan in Connecticut...

Hi Chris, 

Thanks so much.  

Ironically, I was Division Director at Massachusetts DEP when Tom Metzner was writing the regs for your Connecticut. We split over the issues (exports, and what I felt was racially profiling the tech sector in emerging markets) that keep my company (established 2001 when I left MA DEP) from doing business in Connecticut (the only state we don't collect in). In Tom's defense, we were both being bombarded with propaganda from the hazardous waste and Big Shred sectors. I was just fortunate to have travelled to meet the people who were trying to buy stuff, and having surveyed 200+ TV and computer repair shops in New England (who explained a TV is a lot more hazardous plugged into a wall and broadcasting ads in your living room than it is in a landfill or recycling yard).
Yep, we accept 1) anything with a cord, and 2) cordless electronics.  

If you want to contribute further, or spread the word, visit WR3A.org or its new website fairtraderecycling.net, a non-profit that acts as an "anti-defamation league" for geeks of color. 

Robin

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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Regulatory Gymnastics: Officials' Time Out for Recycling Waste Offset

Hey, just a quick note to those of you who have been asking what the latest is with the Fair Trade Recycling Offsets.  I remain really excited about this.  But we had a little setback which has stalled the project.

Here's the history, the latest roadblock in RED.

1. Fair Trade Recycling started with Purchase Orders and Fair Trade Contracts.  When we wrote down what overseas buyers DID NOT ACCEPT, it became pretty clear very quickly that they were not buying stuff to burn it or to operate a "Pollution Haven".  Someone paying us 10 times more for a CRT than it's worth in scrap, but paying ZERO for the same make and model which has damage (disqualifying it from the purchase order) is presumed to be a good actor.

regulatory gymnastics (Labadi Beach Accra, Ghana)

OP ED: GPS Tracker Controversy Resurfaces #Monitour

Just a brief update about the 2016 reports (2) by Basel Action Network which claimed that their partnership with MIT Senseable City Lab demonstrated that 36% of USA E-waste is illegally -  and shamefully - exported.  When the first report came out, one year ago, we contacted MIT to question the following methodological concerns in the study.  MIT sent a disavowal and stopped appearing with BAN in the press, but the damage has been done.  BAN unmasked unwitting and unwilling participants and named names - even companies like mine that they know for a fact did not export the device they shipped to us.  Where there's smoke, someone should get fired.

1) 50% of waste - CRT TVs - were not tracked.  Probably because they are almost never exported. If they are never exported, the exported "findings" fall back into the 10%-20% range identified in several other studies.  It's the "blue-eyed basketball player fallacy" (selective sampling).  They tracked 30% of types of devices deemed likely exports, and found 36% of those were exported.

2) BAN covered up destinations which didn't fit their "primitive and shameful" narrative of overseas recycling.  Here is video from April '15, six months before our downstream USA recycler exported a printer we handled, of Hong Kong's legal EcoPark.  We found direct evidence that BAN erased the coordinates for this facility, and shared that on the blog and with MIT.



3) BAN misidentified legal repair and reuse as shameful exporting.  Two CRTs tracked in Pakistan ended up in a multi-story reuse shop a couple of blocks from Pakistan's largest tech university, in the same building that sells CRT analog converters (changing monitors to TVs).  Another data point that "disappeared" in BAN's second report appears to show a large SKD factory in Foshan.  If it isn't this factory, then why did BAN erase the datapoints in its second report?  In Fact, one of the SEATTLE devices exported (under investigation by Washington DEP) was in fact tracked through the site above, and is found in reuse in Tin Shui Wai (a city, not a rice paddy, in the New Territories).  BAN erased the datapoint, but it was shared with us by someone in Seattle, and we profiled the cover up here.

4) Whether or not the tampering and fallacies above were intentional, BAN's participation and funding and sharing data with E-Stewards who sponsor BAN financially are prima facia violations of MIT ethics rules on both conflict of interest and tracking of "unwitting and unwilling" human subjects.  If there was any question whether BAN was just following devices or was targeting unwitting and unwilling subjects in the first report release, that was released in the second, where BAN named me personally and my clients in Somerville, despite knowing that we did NOT export the device they tracked. Oh, and the Somerville site is a commercial office, not a public drop off point... MIT undergrads had to ring a doorbell and get buzzed in to a building with no "recycling" sign.  At that point, MIT assigned its attorneys to the case and MIT Senseable City Lab issued a disclaimer and stopped commenting publicly on BAN's allegations.

And remember, #2 EcoPark is a direct competitor of E-Steward donors!

5) We had direct tracking of exactly how much of our used electronics we qualify for direct or potential export.  It's under 10%.  We provided that information to MIT Senseable City Lab, who provided it to BAN before BAN issued the 2nd report ignoring that data.   The fact we could track that item without BAN's GPS was less interesting to us than the fact that an E-Steward who pays BAN handsomely cancelled our shipments of printer scrap for several weeks while the GPS tracker was in our building.  A source at MIT has privately confirmed the same suspicion, that BAN had active access to "live" devices and that it would have been simple to warn paying sponsors to avoid shipments containing the devices.

If anyone needed a track record for BAN's targeting of me personally, here is a reminder of a paid BAN staffer's characterization of me, personally, to a Chicago Patch reporter two years earlier, and BAN's public admission of the personal attack, and apology to me.

Whether funders like The Body Shop Foundation or researchers like Carlo Ratti of MIT Senseable City lab will ever partner with Basel Action Network again is an open question.   But they would be wise to track the history and reputation of the "watchdog" that barks at companies that don't pay them "certification fees" worth millions of dollars to stay silent, and to fund vicious racist attacks on innocent Tech Sector importers and exporters like "Hurricane" Joe Benson of the UK - the Tom Robinson of UK's witch hunt into fake news about Agbogbloshie distributed by BAN... falsehoods exposed by me months before BAN's report called me out in shameful light.

It's a shame that legitimate concerns exposed by the study can't now be pursued without airing false propaganda.   The fact our Massachusetts printer, sent to Chicago, didn't go to the place in Hong Kong described and approved (#2) and the reasons - legit or not - given to our downstream USA copy machine repair shop who exported it... all legitimate avenues to explore and learn from.  But those could have been pursued without "unmasking" the unwitting and unwilling participants, and without the 5 research fallacies described above.

I'm bringing this up because last week a Vermont Agency of Natural Resources staff person made a claim about my company and the GPS tracking which did not mention the legal R2 certified facilities in Hong Kong or EcoPark (video above), in defense of new Procedures which the Agency admits are directed at one company - mine.

Circular Economy and African Shanzhai: Under the Bridge

Shanzhai, or Shan Zhai, or sanzai...

I dropped the word "shanzai" recently.  In my mind, it's something I blogged about not that long ago (2011) - a term I learned from meeting Dr. Josh Goldstein at USC via Adam Minter.  But I do admit to that habit of dropping a word or a phrase in places where no one knows what I'm talking about (unless they do).

Like a reference to "the Keystone Cops", the word "shanzhai" went "whoosh" over the heads of my listeners.  But in a reuse and recycling context, it's a profound concept.  It is like a master guitarist finding that a fan has learned to play his riffs even better than he can.  It's the concept of taking an iPhone 6 and repairing it with bells and whistles that make it, virtually, like an iPhone 9 (yet to be invented).

Today's blog has three goals - 1) remind readers of the importance of shanzhai, 2) show some really awesome examples of Africans turning broken LCD TVs into things of higher value, and 3) explore the "poor communicator" dynamic which so often dumbs down own discussions. When is it necessary to go back and remind a new reader what a word means?  Often today, journalists and bloggers "hotline" the word by html to a definition somewhere else online, similar to a footnote.

So here's the thing - Shanzai is being re-defined in relationship to "counterfeit" stuff. In the same way the charitable industrial complex defined African electronic recycling with "bad" images of Agbogbloshie, and defined Chinese technology reuse with cesspools and rice paddies, someone is out to bury the concept of refurbishment itself, and to make it seem shameful.

And they are going to use European and American implicit racism and assumptions about Africans and Chinese people to keep the competition away.  Like second string white baseball players, the American and European "big shred" recyclers are frightened of competition from Jackie Robinson.

To be fair, shanzai does also mean borrowed or knock-off, but in Chinese it has a much more respected context.  As I explained in the blog, Shanzhai is respected in China, in the way that John Frusciante, 47, (Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist) respects Josh Klinghoffer, 37.  Klinghoffer copied Frusciante's guitar riffs and added a spice to them that put the Red Hot Chili Peppers on another level.

Here's what you will see in the blog below the "more" line:

1) Chili Peppers "under the bridge" video
2) An explanation of how I feel lonely explaining African exports (tied to lyrics)
3) A photo slide show demonstrating what Africans are doing with broken LCD TVs (like the ones Total Reclaim allowed to be exported to China)

And as usual, the conclusion

4) African geeks know more than we do, and the "circular economy" doesn't revolve around white people.

followed by

5) a blog-end of why it may be worth it to sometimes write a blog that's over most reader's level of expertise.

See if you can check the boxes

Value Added By Recycling Industries in Massachusetts (1992, Robin Ingenthron) - What John Tierney Failed to Learn about Garbage

Value Added By Recycling Industries in Massachusetts (1992, Robin Ingenthron)

This is kind of a hoot.  Dr. Josh Lepawsky found a paper I wrote my first months in the job at MA DEP, 30 years old, 25 years ago. It got Boston Globe front page coverage because of ricochet.   A loud PIRG vs. Plastic Packaging Industry referendum fight had thrust "recycling" into a spotlight, and the value of "recycling" rather than the packaging policy itself, was occupying the center stage.  Critics of the referendum were attacking state recycling policy, and proponents of the packaging laws were wrapping themselves in recycling like it was mom, apple pie, and the American flag.

To defend recycling as a policy, I tried to explain that there aren't "good markets" and "bad markets".  There are "buyers markets" and "sellers markets", and from an economic perspective, the paper mills, glass furnaces, metal refiners, etc. were adding more value than "waste diversion" from landfills.  So I got some secondary data on the recycled paper mills etc. that I'd supplied as a recycling collector, added up their employees, and explained the multiipliers.

The paper doesn't do so explicitly, but buried in it was my first realization that paper mills might be worse "neighbors", environmentally (odor, water effluent) than an incinerator or landfill, but they created so many jobs that the neighborhoods surrounding those mills were advocates.  Environmental enforcement was linked, geographically, to real estate value.  Likewise, those same jobs, which would disappear in Massachusetts if the tissue paper had to be made from trees, were far more important economically than the value of a ton of paper at a recycling center.

I was initially accused of writing the paper to influence the referendum (and threatened, professionally). I responded that the paper mill employees and those like me who'd been driving paper recycling trucks were kind of bemused... I might next leak the number of laundromats in MA and see if that got in the Globe.  And four years later, this paper was called upon to rebut John Tierney's "Recycling is Garbage" rant, which in part arose out of the very anti-recycling statements being made during the Packaging Referendum Wars (which employed many Bottle Bill Battle generals... history for another blog).

Anyway I long ago lost track of the paper, Josh found it at the MA State House library.

NGO Needle in Haystack #3: Logic of BAN on Interracial Marriage

Re-Release of Paused Blog #3

"Well Robin, you might have a nice biracial marriage.  I'm just worried about your future children, they seem to me to be the victims.  Don't you worry they'll be rejected by both races and won't fit in anywhere?  And the fact your marriage works out doesn't mean that most interracial marriages will". 

My first fiance (1980) was non-white, and I heard that kind of crap where I grew up in the Ozarks.  I vividly remember arguments about the Loving vs. Virginia Supreme Court decision, which ruled Virginia law against interracial marriages unconstitutional. It was completely illogical, driven by ignorance and fear.  There were no facts in the argument against my engagement announcement.  It was completely based on conjecture and speculation.

The NGO crusade against the overseas Tech and Repair Sector, or "Repair and Overhaul" (R and O) not only reminds me of the segregation logic, but also smacks of environmental malpractice.    For several years, people in the Recycling community have said to me:

"Robin, I would prefer that you not export anything for reuse.  Even if you know the people that you are selling displays to - and I don't doubt they are good people - the fact is that I've read 80% of the waste is burned by children under primitive conditions."

Now the people who said the quote at the top about interracial marriage were good, church going people (family).  They really were.  Really, really, good people.  And the people who said the second quote, too, are outstanding environmentalists.  But the fact is that, in the second case, for too long I walked around satisified that people trusted ME to export but believed that most of the export market was bad.  And I knew the SKD markets and RandO was misrepresented.  I did try harder, I'm sure, than others to screen the exports.  But the racist imagery just bugs the hell out of me, and we have to do something about it.  Like ask, "what the hell is MIT's Senseable Media Lab doing hooking up with Basel Action Network??  Didn't they read the Travis Reed Miller thesis?

From the banner atop the NGO's web page (screenshot), we have the 1970s Prince Nico Mbarga white Magnavox TV.  No doubt imported used, originally.  And absolutely no doubt it was imported more than a decade before the photo was taken.  If the NGO planted a GPS tracker in that old white TV today, the chances of it winding up in Agbogbloshie or Hong Kong are zero.

But the propaganda continues, despite the fallacy and illogic.  I could run a photo of the Lovings in their 70s and imply that their aging was a result of the marriage, and it would make as much sense as running a photo of a TV in Agbogbloshie now which was imported in 1977.

Will PBS repeat the mistake it made in Frontline?

@KCTS9 Here's what the NGO should actually be saying

Ghana Connected Photos by Robin Ingenthron

While getting news when we can from Accra's terrible flood and fires of the past 24 hours, I'm uploading photos through National Geographic.  175 dead, we pray for the families and friends of our friends in Ghana.  We are connected.

Here are 15 Photos from our Agbogbloshie trip which try to connect the dots of the "ewaste" story... the villages young men leave for the "big city". The Tech Sector which imports used electronics, connecting us, creating sustainable jobs. The cities which eventually upgrade and produce overflow "e-waste". And the young men who break motors and burn wires to pay rent in the city.

Ghana Connected:  Photos by Robin Ingenthron (National Geographic website)

This is a Slide Show with 15 of the best photos from the trip to Ghana.   Need at least 15 more, to cover the trip to Tema for example, to the shopping malls, and to the homes (and children) of the technicians who hosted me.

If you want to read more, go here.   Two more reporters confirm the "Millions of Tons" Hoax.

This place I'm standing on is now under water.  While I was there, they told me it would be under water in another month or two. It's a flood plain.  It happens every year.

Vermont Apple-to-Orange Software Validates CRT Recycling

(This is part of an April Fool's blog tradition, and I hope no one took it personally)

Small Northeast State Solves E-Waste Recycling Glut Profitably, with New Validation Procedures

[Middlebury, VT  April 1 2014]  It turns out there are two ways to solve the E-Waste Recycling Crisis.    In a stunning turn of developments, Vermont has validated a brand new way to recycle CRTs.


1.  Charge manufacturers more (42 cents per pound rather than 28)
2.  Demand less (allow land application)
3.  Profit!

Suppose there are two ways to do something.  One way takes a lot of labor hours, and then costs a lot to transport and treat the material.   The other way takes fewer hours of labor, but creates a mixed mess that is even more extremely expensive to transport and treat the material.  Normally, this is called "getting what you paid for".

But with an online thesaurus tool, Vermont "recyclers" are now "solving" this "e-waste" "problem".

Inequation disproved in 6 month study

"We were as stumped as the next state with the need to change our award winning state recycling program," said Vermont ANR Commissioner David Mears.   "But we made lemonade."

John Obfusca of Cali Waste Systems described the new development.  "One of our guys, at the end of the shift, just goes 'Hey, what if we just don't recycle it, but we call it something kinda alternativey?'  It turns out, you just have to name the process right to get it approved."

Diverting waste from a landfill into another landfill?  Land cover that fits the defination (per RFP) of "no land application"?   There's an app for that.

How to Fix E-Waste in Africa in 5 Easy Steps

StEP into recycling

Here is a roadmap for recycling used electronics in Africa, in 5 Simple Steps.

1.  Correctly report the problems.  

African cities have had TVs and electronics for several decades and generate their own "e-waste".  Most of the "ewaste" filmed (BAN, Greenpeace) at dumps was not recently reported, but "takeback" from reuse markets which import newer product.  We want to further reform the trade, not to nuke it.

2.  De-Criminalize Purchase for repair and reuse in the EU.   

The reuse people are not "going back to Eden" if you boycott them.  They are tinkerers who create good jobs and affordable product in African marketplaces.  We want to improve their jobs, not to nuke them.

3. Use value of exports to incentivize domestic African takeback infrastructure.   

Many Africans who purchase imported reuse goods also do repair for domestic electronics. The abandoned repairs are a form a product takeback infrastructure. In fact, it's EXACTLY the same as the evolution of electronics repair and sale in Massachusetts in the 1970s.   

TV repair shops learned they could make more money if they offered a choice of Retail Replacement as well as Repair, letting the consumer make a choice.  When the consumer chooses not to repair (or worse, asks for the unit to be repaired but then changes their mind and doesn't return for it), the TV repairperson becomes a takeback operation.  When Masschusetts DEP enacted the first "ewaste" law in America (CRT Waste Ban), it was a TV repair family which created the largest TV recycling operation in the USA.  Africa is on the same path.

4.  Recycling, Reconciliation and mass balance.   

Hand-labor recycling is actually cleaner and produces better results than mechanical shredding. Just don't burn the items you disassemble, and recycling is still profitable.  The caveat is CRT glass and mercury backlighting.

Left purely to the free market, Africa will have little incentive to properly recycle CRT glass (the most expensive component).   The value of reuse exports should be adjusted, reducing sale price to Europe or the USA according to the actual recycling and takeback, and should be monitored, or they will accumulate the same CRT glass piles the USA has accumulated.

This system preserves Tinkerer Blessing jobs (compared to StEP's OEM-funded solution).  It will also work in India and other emerging markets.  But there's one immediate step we need to take first.

5.  Where scrap recycling, repair, and refurbishment already exist, nurture it.

Major CRT glass recycling operations have been shut down by friendly fire.    In Indonesia, Malaysia, and Southern China, semiknockdown (refurbishing) factories, glass washing operations, and warranty-repair-turned-takeback operations have been closed.  It is not too late to save repair in Africa.  

As Recycling Director for the Massachusetts DEP in the 1990s, I tried always to preserve existing expertise and infrastructure.   Massachusetts had not prepared Salvation Army, Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul for new freon rules in the 1980s, and created a "white goods" glut.  I was determined not to do that, and we took care of our scrap paper packers, our TV repairpeople, and our charities.   The Massachusetts model of charity partnerships was later adapted by Dell in its Goodwill ReConnect program (I met with Michael Dell and Pat Nathan personally in 2001, suggesting the partnership would take them out of the BAN attack on Dell's Unicor prison recycling program at that time). 

The same partnership approach can succeed in Africa. Rather than demonize, demoralize, insult and ridicule the scrap boys and repair technicians, the entrepreneurs like Joseph Benson or Hamdy Moussa or Souleymane Sao, we need to defend them.   Touche pas a mon pote, E-Stewards.

Why Recycling Coordinator Title Trumps Sustainability Coordinator

College and university recycling staff (CURC etc) kept in touch durint the Fair Trade Recycling Summit (Earth Week in Middlebury).  Some have confided that recycling is old hat, "sustainability" is in, and that energy and carbon are at their peak for "prestige" positions at their institutions.

Have always said our goal is for recycling to be taken for granted, to be as boring as laundromats.   But at the same time, if you are truly motivated by green, and ever have a chance at a career in recycling, grab it.

Here's why recycling is the best thing.

First things first, forget all about "waste management" and "zero waste".   We hitched the recycling wagon to the "waste management" pony for one reason.  No, it was not to preserve landfills, or avoid construction of incinerators.   Scrap and recycling has only one competitor - virgin material.

In order to compete with the mining and forest subsidies (e.g. the General Mining Act of 1872, passed during the Apache Indian Wars under the Ulysses S. Grant administration), scrap needed to compete with raw materials by claiming avoided disposal costs.

Recycling, reuse, repair.  They are ultimate environmental impact measures.  Don't quit your recycling job.

Testimony Wanted: E-Waste Import/Export Trials

The Vermont Fair Trade Recycling Summit is collecting 2-3 minute videos, written testimonials, and quotes about the concept of fair trade as an alternative to export bans and prohibition laws.

We had far too many people who wanted to attend and present their ideas, even after opening a third class.  There will be online streaming of the FTR Event.  That means there will be gaps between classes which is an opportunity for you to present your case, pro or con, to thousands of viewers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The only warning is that there are plenty of facts on the table.  Dozens of import/export businesses are talking about their processes, and how fair reuse can actually fund the manual disassembly of used electronics they generate in their own nations.

Send your 2 paragraphs, or video or link from youtube/vimeo/viddler, to Testimony (at) wr3a.org.

Here's an example (my video response to Good, February 11, 2010...

Video Testimony on fair trade (share your ideas as well!) below (click "more")

(My favorites so far are on the theme of "right to assembly" means "right to affordable internet devices".   The same nations which are cracking down on used device imports are the ones cracking down on internet free assembly... )

Scrap Boys i mean are not refined

The Scrap Boys i mean are not refined

they scrape the copper from the steel
they pick the plastic off the ground
they pick the shards out of their heel.

they burn and whack the parts apart
they haul the heavy and the light
they do not give a fart for art
they do not want to pick a fight

they sell to those who want to buy
they buy from those who need to sell
the scrap boys i mean are not refined
they save the mountains in their hell.

written 6./11./2012. with deference to e e cummings
see below if you don't know the boys i mean are not refined poem.

the link above is to a uganda minister.  i don't know him and don't know whether he's legit.  but my guess is he's got to be more legit than the other people making money off these scrap boys pictures.

Memorial Day: Fear and Greed, Part 2

EPA tried to simplify things a few decades ago with a "Solid Waste Hierarchy".  The first was "recycle, then incinerate, then landfill".   That drew an environmentalist backlash, and the "new hierarchy" in 1990 Earth Day was "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle".  Neither hierarchy anticipated the international trade issues and controversies.

Reuse and repair beats recycling.  Ghettos and barrios are the best places for that work... Just as auto and engine repair is no longer done in Manhattan.  But that collides with a social fairness "tab" we have open, and in the late 1990s "Environmental Justice" became EPA's forray into social issues.


Definitions from wikipedia 2012.05.27

The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines EJ as follows:

Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation [sic]. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.^[5]

In other words, this environmental outcome concerned the human perception of environmental risk... people who were poor had the same vote on EPA attention as the rich people.  A clean and safe environment was seen as a human right, a protection of people.

The attention of government regulatory staff was to be divided equally, to protect us all.  This shifted the radius or loci of EPA from protecting high property values to protecting humans equally.

In this paradigm, the value of protecting the environment is utilitarian.  How many people are in contact with the environment being protected?

This is not a song for the woods, or rain forests.  It's only the giving that makes you what you are.

Basel Action Network Awarded Title, Cash, Prizes

[Seattle, WA: April 1, 2012]  A hero's welcome was unveiled for an environmental watchdog group, to recap 10 years of efforts to reduce toxics, enforce international law, and close loopholes for dumping of used surplus electronics, or "e-waste".   The award recognized efforts of a USA NGO to represent unsuspecting victims in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Basel Action Network, of Seattle Washington, dedicated its award to struggling Africans in emerging markets.  These small African businesspeople, who spend hundreds of millions of African dollars on used computers, find out many years later that the goods they imported and use are actually "e-waste".

The "Environmental Revolutionary Steward" award was presented by Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Basel Action Network's leader James Puckett arrived by helicopter from his private first class Paul Gaughin Cruise Ship onto a red carpet at a military ceremony at CenturyLink Field.

Puckett approached the podium to a standing ovation by military rulers from a dozen nations.  He accepted the award as well as a check for 1% of the proceeds of customs fees seized for every container of used computers stopped at the ports in Tripoli, Alexandria, and other "developing world" ports.

Only Outlaws Will Export Computers

President Ahmadinejad held the E-Waste trophy high over his shoulders.  He called the BAN organization the "Real heroes" of the "Pledge of True Green Revolution", and the "Stewards of Stability".   This is the first time Ahmadinejad has used the term "green revolution", a term previously banned from use in Tehran.

Each of the generals and dignitaries joined Puckett to decry the pollution and toxic risks from the use of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Google+, Orkut, Stumbledupon, etc.

"Ok, Revolution 2.0 is over.  Revolution 3.0 has now returned things 180 degrees, prior to all of this Kaleed Said nonesense," said Saadi Gaddafi Qaddafy Kwadafee, the billionaire football star and playboy son of deposed Colonel Omar Quadafi of Libya.

Prepared for used cell phone fixer lab raids

"We will not have our children exposed to computer viruses, or poisoned by toxic fumes from affordable computers," said Bashar al-Assad, leader of Syria.  "Used PCs pollute our young brains with pornographic images of democracy."

The "E-Steward Award" recognizes the efforts of European, American, South Korean, or Japanese recyclers who shred the highest percentage of used electronics, or close the doors of affordable "white box" refurbishing factories.

"Good enough technology is not good enough for Africa," said Husni Mubarek, via a Skype call covered on the stadium megastream.  A chant of "Good enough is not good enough" ensued from the green-uniformed military battalion at center stage.


"Appropriate technology is completely inappropriate," said deposed Tunisian president-for-second-life Zine al-Abadine Ben Ali.

PACE Yourself: Basel Logic of e-Waste Export

HP Blackbird 002 Crashes in the Dead of the Night.
An e-waste export crime in the making...

Basel Convention has a section on legal export which says that repairing electronics is not "Waste".  The ENGO Basel Action Network protested that from the beginning, but lost.  The ENGO now seeks to change this via a BAN "Amendment", calling the Convention as ratified as "an unfinished success story"...

In the meantime, while waiting for its amendment to be passed, BAN is fervently presenting the case that export for repair is indeed already waste.   While waiting to get its export-crime law passed, BAN is also trying to get "competent authorities" in importing countries to act as if repair is already illegal.

Blackbird crashing inthe dead of the night

The NGO has already been very successful when either A) the importing country manufactures new products and sees protectionism value in BAN's interpretation, or B) is a dictatorship trying to stop affordable internet.  89.7% of e-waste enforcement I've seen may be within one of these two categories [tic].  Now they are trying to get the interpretation enacted by USA Congress.   This is what HR 2284, the Green Thompson #Ewaste Bill, would do in the USA.

While waiting for export for repair to be made illegal, how is export for repair already in fact illegal?  BAN explains the logic, in their own words. From the BAN Library:

Why All Good Recyclers are Exporters.

There are many good recyclers, and we are all exporters. 
The purpose of certification is to "out" the liars, not to debate the outliers. 


During the past week (blogs below), I've written several essays concerning marketing themes which are "attacking the category".

Negative campaigning, also known more colloquially as "mudslinging", is trying to win an advantage by referring to negative aspects of an opponent or of a policy rather than emphasizing one's own positive attributes or preferred policies. In the broadest sense, the term covers any rhetoric in which one refers to one's opponent in an ad hominem manner. [ wikipedia 2012.02.08]

Negative imagery of competitors' export practices probably accounts for "80% of advertising" for ewaste recyclers (a statistic I just manufactured... see how easy it is for Americans to make things - up?)

Export policy is important, it does matter.  Below are five distinct export categories, and the niches they serve.   How we manage and certify the first four will help us all to control the 5th (see post "Ewaste Travel in Scrap Metal" 2010).   Mixing CRT glass and mercury bulbs into bales of scrap metal is one dumping problem, but ship captains stranded with cargo refused at port is another cause of the same "export for dumping" problem.   Basically, there are five ways for your "e-waste" to get from Here to There.

FIVE CATEGORIES OF E-WASTE EXPORTS

1.  Export No Intact Unit Category:   Some of us feel safer exporting raw materials only, and market the "no intact unit" standard as an option.  These companies attract business from OEMs concerned with reuse (market cannabalization), counterfeiting, or the "grey markets" somewhere in between.  It's a legitimate recycling category.  These companies represent an excellent choice, for example, for an OEM with faulty parts taken back under warranty that they don't want redistributed.  These recyclers export bales of steel, plastic, copper, aluminum, and circuit boards, sold openly on the commodities market.  (slideshow of China's metal recycling companies, which buy shredded material for hand sorting - The Atlantic Monthly 2008)

2.  Export of Tested Working Category:   Some of us sell to retail markets, such as schools or direct retail shops, which are not in the repair business and are willing to pay more for something "fully functional" and "tested working".  The recyclers who sell to the direct-reuse market tend to wipe hard drives, reinstall MAR licenses, and do other things to ensure their exports are what the buyer ordered.  (Slideshow of Egyptian repair / direct reuse markets, 2008)

3.  Export for Repair and Refurbishing Category:   Within the remote corners (83% of the world), there are mind-blowing repair and remanufacturing companies.  Some of these began as contract manufacturers (e.g. CRT factories) and performed warranty repairs as well as assembly.  Some have turned to full-fledge cores refurbishers, creating thousands of jobs in emerging markets, taking back things like old CRT tubes or smallish LCDs and recutting and re-vamping them.  They make things like monitor-television-DVD combos, which are sold in vast quantities to people earning $3,000 per year, who cannot afford to buy all 3 separately.  They tend to be very picky, but not about things like 120 volt power supplies... whether the power supply works or not, it's getting replaced for sale in a 220 volt country.  It's a very legitimate category.  The fact they buy non-working power supplies as well as working power supplies is evidence that they are the opposite of primitive.  Slides of the factories I've visited are available here.

Redemtech Explains (Attacks) R2

Singapore Internet Cafe

Basel Action Network says that my criticism has been mean-spirited, sometimes "ad hominem" attacks.  My friends see this blog as a purely defensive force.  If BAN and E-Stewards stops with the attacks on refurbishers, a la California Compromise, we could do great things together.  But classifying all 83% of the world in "non-OECD" nations as primitive wire burning victims is just wrong.


Here's a case in point.  E-Stewards are mounting their own blogs.  Here is one, sponsored by Redemtech of Ohio, by professional writer Carol Baroudi.  I'm not attacking Redemtech here.   But using Carol's own words, by agreeing with them, are we attacking her? Or is this a ricochet wound?


Redemtech is an electronics recycling company in Ohio.  They are an E-Steward certified "ewaste" company.   Bob Houghton, the CEO, has been in the business for a long time, and is a respected IT recycler.  This is not an attack on Redemtech... but this is the only way to reply.  When Redemtech started a blog, I left some comments.  I don't recall the comments ever being approved by moderators.  So, I'll try to get my point across here.

Redemtech blogger Carol Baroudi sounds off on R2, EPA's "Responsible Recycler" certification, and why E-Stewards is superior.   Note the tone...

First and foremost – No non-functioning equipment is ever exported. Got that? Never. R2 makes no such claim.

Got it.

This is certainly true.  I don't think anyone disputes that.  What is disputed is whether an E-Steward's working P2s are somehow superior to the P4's with replaceable capacitors which Wistron or another Asian subcontractor wants to buy.    Or whether the USA creates more jobs shredding those P4s rather than selling them back to the company that makes capacitors, for 5 times more money.  What is disputed is whether the same factory that takes back product for repair under warranty can also buy the exact same computer at surplus and do the same thing.  E-Stewards, according to the quote, considers warranty repair and manufacturer-takeback to be a crime.

There are more examples of "non-functioning" but good exports.  Empty ink cartridges for refilling ... no one claims those are "functioning"... there are lots of things in the "cores" business, for which "fully functional" is not an important criterion.   And it's all legal under Basel Convention Annex IX.  Lots of OEMs want us to shred the ink cartridges, rather than refill them, because they sell new ones for $20-30 each.  Maybe that's why some OEMs are the biggest contributors to E-Stewards.

Redemtech shipment

CRT monitors.  Why is "non-functional" so important to Carol, when it's not what the buyers are screening out?  I have personally seen Redemtech containers being unloaded in Jahor Bahru, Malaysia, when I went to visit a buyer there.   The Redemtech CRTs may well have been "tested working".   But the buyer's specifications were not "tested working".  The buyer didn't want "working" R4 tubes (trinitron).  But the buyer would be happy to receive other tubes that did not have a working power supply, because that's what the buyer does - refurbishes tubes.

These Redemtech PCs are being reused, and Redemtech should be as proud of trading with the Malaysians in this photo as I am.  If they refuse a tested working 21" tube because it's too big, or a 17" because of a surplus backlog or raster test, and pay $10 for the others... how could they be burning them?  It's obvious without visiting them.  But I did visit them, and was impressed.

I am the one who raised "warranty repair" as an issue, thinking that might cause people to think a little bit about who the contract manufacturers were.   I worked with ones which did both warranty returns and purchased refurbish-able ones on their own.

I thought that might really bring people closer together, explaining how warranty repair is the same factory as purchase certain (but not all) "non-functioning equipment".

But it's true.  First and foremost, warranty returns are non-functioning equipment.   They are made almost universally in factories which are not OECD.  Redemtech asks if we "got that"?

Got it.

When my company ships to the factory, we read the specifications in the PO, we remove what they want us to remove (including working equipment which is in surplus, or low demand, or wrong size/spec), and we get a feedback or QA/QC report explaining exactly how well our staff prepared what they shipped, and whether any of it was outside what they needed.  We had the factory inspected to meet R2 processes, and as a result of our contract, they became a CRT glass processor, taking back bad ones from the places they sold good ones (think needle exchage or "computers for clunkers").

So my problem with E-Stewards?  I think we can agree:

First and foremost – No non-functioning equipment is ever exported. Got that? Never. R2 makes no such claim.

So I haven't said or implied Redemptech is a bad company.  I think they are a great company.  I just happen to think that the people we both sold to in Malaysia had a great company, too.  And from in depth, face to face meetings, I am pretty sure I know what they need from us to make the world better.

What I don't understand is what the heck the factories Redemtech and I both sold to have to do with the primitive child photos in burning ditches which E-Stewards displays on its website.  Mr. Ong said "hi", by the way, when he gave me a ride across the bridge to his home in Singapore.

Pulp Blogging about Recycling: 16 Short Paragraphs

Pulp Non-Fiction.   My career, developing recycling infrastructure.  Markets, participation, and logistics make recycling more economical. People who want to recycle, and mills which can use waste materials as resources, working together.  You know, the alternative to cutting down rain forests.

Who is really poisoning and destroying his brothers?

The success of recycling, in many ways, is no more important than the establishment of an infrastructure for laundromats.   There weren't washing machines all over the country one hundred years ago.  Now there are.  They have created countless spare hours for poor women to use in more productive careers, education, etc.  Like internet cafes in Africa, they bring tech access to the masses.  But what could be more boring?


Part of the challenge for recycling culture is to accept our success and become boring.  We were part of an environmental sustainability movement.  In many ways, we were the most important part, as recycling saves carbon, energy, forests, and species, and creates wealth where there is poverty.

The temptation over the past ten years has been for recycling people like myself to try to find a new controversy, a new battle, a new war.  We are like retired colonels who miss the days of bravery and grandness. The temptation to set off on a new crusade is understandable.

For me, the pursuit of recycling infrastructure has become about erasing national boundaries in order to make the solid waste hierarchy more efficient.   We reduce mining by extending the lives of products already mined, for example.  In doing so, we bring internet cafes to dark places.  Others stay in the USA, and see "overseas" as a new adversary.