Can Someone Explain Basel Convention? Part 2

So I just returned from the E-Scrap Conference in Orlando, Florida, held at the Orlando Hilton from September 30 to October 2.  The final session of the conference, moderated by Colin Staub, had 4 panelists.

Jim Puckett, Basel Action Network

Patricia Whiting, Whiting and Daswani Consulting

Craig Boswell, HOBI International (Texas)

Emmanuel Nyaletey, BridgeSolarPower.com 

First, what everyone basically agrees on.  "The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (hereinafter referred to as “the Basel Convention”) was adopted in 1989, in response to a public outcry following the discovery, in the 1980s, in Africa and other parts of the developing world of deposits of toxic wastes imported from abroad." (https://www.basel.int/TheConvention/Overview/History/Overview)

In general, the idea behind the Basel Convention was that industrialized nations shouldn't dump industrial hazardous waste on non-industrialized nations.  We can all agree that makes sense - industry makes money which should be spent on cleaning up the waste those industries make.  

UNITAR Global E-Waste "Monitor" 2024: Better, but still kinda cringy?

I have yet to read more than the Executive Summary and Table of Contents of the new UNEP Global E-Waste Monitor report, but I can already see that it's being mis-reported.  The "hook" is an emergency, that only 22.3% of e-waste is "documented", and the rest (the Executive Summary implies), is presumed to be "improperly" managed or "lost" to the so-called "informal sector".

Readers may remember this blog previously defined "informal sector" as "a white person didn't enter it into a spreadsheet"... in response to the "Criminal Negligence" 2015 Report.

UNITAR (another UN agency) describes the reports findings as follows:

"Meanwhile, less than one quarter (22.3%) of the year’s e-waste mass was documented as having been properly collected and recycled in 2022, leaving US $62 billion worth of recoverable natural resources unaccounted for and increasing pollution risks to communities worldwide. "

The "five fold growth" in "e-waste" is describing worldwide generation, not just wealthy countries.  This raises questions about the measurement of "undocumented" used electronics... but lets list a few obvious premises.

1.  The size of electronics PER CAPITA is declining due to the miniaturization effect.  In 1992 it peaked because we needed a desk phone, an answering machine, a fax machine, a camera, a radio, etc.... all of which now fit inside the smart phone in my front pocket.  

2. The export market, which the previous 2015 UNEP Report described as "primitive", is mostly for reuse.  So if there was less e-waste generated in the past compared to the future, that can only be explained by the continuous reuse of past devices which continue to be reused and maintained in places like Ghana, Nigeria, Angola, etc.  

3. The UNEP reports conflate the end of first consumer use with "waste generated", as if reuse and repair, if not "documented", is in the "ewaste" volume assesssed.  That would mean that if a white person owns a TV for ten years, and it's purchased and reused by an African for another 40 years, that the "waste" is counted twice - the first time it was "generated" and the actual "end of life" of the TV.

Photo of TV Repairman Ibrahim Alhassan in Savelugu, Ghana, who we introduced to author Adam Minter, who wrote about Ibrahim in the seminal reuse non-fiction book "Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale".  Ibrahim was repairing a 1970 Japanese CRT television, or rather improving it by addint a remote control function absent in the original knob-tuned TV.  This TV certainly would have been destroyed by "Big Shred" in Europe decades ago... but hard to describe the African's continuous use and extended life as "primitive"... unless you are a wee bit racially-profilly.

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.

#WhiteManSplaining Letter 2024: Dear Emerging Markets

February 25, 2024

RE: Basel Convention And OECD Superiority

Dear Emerging Market Tech Sector Buyers:

The purpose of this letter is to explain to you why international laws are drafted by privileged societies purporting to protect and "save" your society, which we have labelled "informal" and "primitive", in order to achieve certain goals which you may not relate to.

1. Protect ourselves from perception of liability for responsibility

2. Shift the burden of proof onto you, the buyer, that what you seek is not stupid externalization of our environmental burdens

3. Protect investments into high-investment machinery and labor-saving shreddiing equipment

4. Retain in our national interests in raw material values.

The first endeavor places a value on our reputation among other WhiteMan Press and Publicity industries which is greater than the value you could ever achieve for creating a critical mass of users necessary to support investments in mass communications in your developing countries. We understand, remotely, that your Nollywood (Nigerian Hollywood) industry and television stations and satellite infrastructure depends greatly upon the affordability of televisions and phones and other communications devicds. However, the potential for the perception of an allegation that we, as whitemandsplainers, might be externalizing an environmental cost poses risk to our much larger value of ownership, real estate, and control over the system of trade. It is better for us that you stay in your place.

Inspired by LCS 2010 Presentation in Alexandria, VA, introducing

Jim Puckett of BAN and Michael "Fishing as a Boy" Anane

Swordfish ë, Part 1: How Modest Mentors Fish for Agents of Conscience, Surrounded by Tilapia

 

Sunrise in Vermont

We had the pleasure of connecting with Agabas Ayudor a few months ago, all thanks to a wonderful activist from the UK who reached out to me. It's funny how these connections form—perhaps Adam Minter wrote about me, or maybe it was the influence of this blog. This blog, while long-winded and dense, serves as a public record that orbits a solar system not centered around privileged individuals obsessed with egos and real estate values. Instead, it focuses on the best and brightest minds emerging from the Tech Sector in rapidly developing "LDC" Emerging Markets.

Within this vast landscape, there exists a rare breed—the 1 in 1,000 who discerns the manipulation of collective guilt management by entities like the Anti Gray Market Alliance/Planned Obsolescence, Big Shred, and the Charitable Industrial Complex. I'd even throw in a few foreign governments seeking to corral non-OECD markets using Basel Convention rules (we might need a catchy nickname for that). These discerning individuals, the "Swordfish," possess the brilliance or transboundary knowledge to comprehend the intricate topics discussed in this blog.

What sets the Swordfish apart is their potential to shape the future positively. Writing for an audience that values conscience over sheer numbers allows for a more profound impact on the environmental solar system. Sometimes, it's tempting to focus on gaining thousands of followers, but the real influence lies in resonating with agents of conscience.

The Torching Critical Mass of Used Solar Voltaic Panels at Africa Barber Shops

Accra, Ghana:  Every barber in the city knows the other barbers in the city.

Every person in the city knows a barber in the city.

The leasing of used solar panels, imported from Vermont, can light a torch - so to past-speak - on rapid adaptation of solar panel electricity in Africa.  And Africa is obviously the fastest growing population on the grandest continent. Unless our plan is for Africans to live without electricity and not cook their food, they will continue to buy expensively off of a limited electric grid, and buy illegally deforested charcoal to cook their meals.

Jim and Daniel Puckett, just come here right now and attack this export of used solar panels for good and proper use. That's your thing...Get it over with.

The electric grid in Africa was meticulously studied before I lived in Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer+-3

See these African Tech Geniuses getting free secondhand panels and measure the gallons / liters of diesel they save every day, every single day, from the ubiquitous diesel powered electric generators which are feeding demand since IMF and World Bank ran out of rivers to Akosomba Dam Hydroelectric fund.

Elective Upgrades Supply Good Enough Markets

Elective Upgrades Supply Good Enough Markets

Is imitation the sincerest form of apology?

There is a guilt dilemma in "First World" aka "Wealthy" aka OECD consumer markets.  While there are repair and delayed gratification reuse trends (my company sells about $25k per month worth of TV parts to USA repair shops), there is also a lot of guilt about "elective upgrade", which remains the driver of most new sales.

Organizations like Basel Action Network and Greenpeace made a false assumption about 2 decades ago that "e-waste" was a product of equipment failure and inability to repair. That Americans, Japanese, South Koreans, Germans, Brits and Italians patiently wait for their CRT televisions, flip phones, and Pentium 4s to become hopelessly unrepairable before buying a plasma TV, smartphone, or i-Series laptop. 

The fact that it is patently obvious to nearly everybody that it was not the case, in hindsight, has been a point of reflection of this blog since I started it in 2006. 

Unnecessary elective upgrades, if indeed they are discarded as "waste" (or sentenced to a desk drawer, attic, or file cabinet) are indeed a wasteful use of mined, refined, extracted raw materials. But if they are reused, they create access for poor people to establish a "critical mass of users" to justify investments in TV broadcast, internet cable, and the estimated 170,000 mobile phone towers today that connect the continent of Africa... all financed by secondhand flip phone sim cards, replaced by black technicians on streets like Lagos, Accra, and Kinshasa.

It's a story older than this bad head gasket... sold to a Cummins motor geek in Florida, who re-exports trucks to rapidly emerging markets. Roads were paved in Appalachia and Ozarks by hillbillies like my grandparents, who could only afford vehicles they were smart enough to buy and fix.

Michael Shellenberger's Mad at Solar Panels. Too Cute Substack Fallacy.

SEE VIDEO: WHY DECOMMISSIONED SOLAR PANELS ARE NOT DEAD YET.  

Like flip phones, CRT monitors, hotel TVs, ex-boyfriends, and used cars, your decision to electively upgrade to a newer solar panel does not mean the ex-panel's life won't go on.

I was coached that people don't have time to read everything, so here's the jist... Shellenberger's thesis is that solar panels are being upgraded far sooner than their 30 year warranty or 40 year estimated lifespan would have buyers assume. That's true, I just gave a presentation on that at NERC.org.  But the reason for the upgrades is not that the used panels are failing or are waste... It's because 

• the price and efficiency are falling, 
• the number of roofs is finite, 
• the cost of siting big solar fields near populated areas is skyrocketing
• early adapters like to upgrade to something new
• AND by 2028, virtually every older working will panel be cost-driven to replace

I have a whole presentation explaining this (Start at 2h 30min, NERC.org recorded session). Like desktop CRTs and Pentium 4 laptops, the solar panels are all going to get electively upgraded.

BUT  like those other items, the secondhand market is gobbling up replaced solar panels. And here's where the circular economy doesn't revolve around you, Michael Shellenberger - a 50% efficient panel replaced by a 100% efficient panel in Vermont GENERATES MORE KW IN AFRICA THAN THE NEW ONE DOES IN VERMONT.

Check out @AdamMinter's Twitter reply string to @ShellenbergerMD (he's not an MD, btw, he uses his first and middle initial).

MORE >

Environmentalists Must Learn From Misdiagnoses: How CRT TCLP Would Affect Asbestos, Solar

First, by request, here are the photos the blog "Halloween Images of Scary Black People" pointed out a decade ago.  The blog was about language used to flog normal activities, rendering them repulsive - or heroicizing the same image (using Wordsworth's "The Village Blacksmith" to describe metal recycling compared to the way BAN.org described metal recycling at Agbogbloshie).

The BAN NGO was so proud of one photograph - of a man carrying copper and aluminum wiring (from scrap automobile harnesses inside a 1970s Magnavox kitchen tabletop TV case) - that they use it on their website masthead, and in annual fundraisers for "Giving Tuesday".  BAN offers readers who feel sorry for the "primitive" man the chance to donate $25-1000 to their NGO.  How the young man will benefit from your donation isn't exactly clear.

But as we pointed out in 2012, that self-same Magnavox kitchen-table CRT television was very, very, very unlikely to have arrived - as BAN repeatedly claims - "days earlier", or as a result of environmental externalization. Even back in 2012, that 1970s TV was an ebay collector's item selling for over $100. It bore no earthly relation to the TVs BAN or Greenpeace filmed unloaded at African port of Tema in 2009, or Jim Puckett's infamous updated photo of Africa's "primitive" Tech Sector.

Here is a picture of the top selling album in Nigeria in 1978 - by Africa's "Elton John" of the 1970s, the artist crowned as "Prince Nico Mbarga" (whose lilting song "Sweet Mother" from the same album remains Africa's chart-topper to this day).

Soooo, there's no evidence at all that the man in BAN's photo is carrying a TV imported used in 2012, vs. imported new or used in 1977. But BAN's practice of pushing the plastic casing as evidence of environmental injustice is ironically quite bigoted. BAN's unspoken assumption is that if-not-but-for villains like Joe "Hurricane" Benson, Agbogbloshie would be full of swimming and fishing young Michael Ananes, littered only with banana peels and coconut shells.

INTERPOL's (Higgins and Lindemulder) "Project Eden" was cruelly naive about African city waste. 

WasteDive Asks: Are Solar Panels the Next CRT Recycling Problem?

 Our small Vermont company gets 2 big stories in July.

First, Recycling International is publishing a 2 page interview with Yours Truly, whose small Vermont Recycling Company has catapulted to #36 on the Magazine's list of Notable Recyclers worldwide (and that's not just "e-waste").

Do we belong on a list that includes Robin Weiner of ISRI at #15, or author Adam Minter at #6?

My only explanation is ironic - compared to similar lists a decade ago, Recycling International now realizes there are hundreds of well-managed recycling companies in places like Ghana, India, China, Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore.  After reading their interview of me, I realized the irony that a) thanks to us (and this blog), the list is much harder for a white American to get onto, and b) we are deliciously placed several rows above Basel Action Network (screenshot below), which tried to get me labelled as a pariah after being called out for profiling Joe "Hurricane" Benson as a "primitive recycler" (rather than a 25 year expert at reuse export) based on his nationality.

But before I "bury" the lead about solar panel recycling ---  it's been my honor to put together an esteemed panel on how Solar Panel Reuse in Emerging Markets may offer the same solutions as it offered SVGA computer monitors 20 years ago... Register at NERC.org for a front row on Zoom, as I participate with Emmanual Nyalete of Ghana, Lennart Banaszak of Germany, and Good Point Recycling's very own Solar Nerd Trevor de Young (who's trailer home is almost completely "off grid" with salvaged solar panels - including some deliberately smashed by the solar de-installers in an botched "end of life" crime).

(see hammer marks, which rendered this panel 50% efficient. If it is relocated to Ghana, the 50% efficient panel will produce more KWH - due to abundant sunlight - than it produced in Vermont before it was "sabotaged" to prevent reuse).

Katie Pyzyk's interview in WasteDive explores our pilot program for solar panel reuse... and finds parallels to the CRT Reuse concerns that resulted in California SB20 and piles of shredded leaded CRT cullet across the West.

BusinessInsider: New Zealand Company Extracts Gold from PC Boards Using Microbes (and...)

This Business Insider video on gold recycling just came out on Youtube.

I haven't even finished watching it yet, because the opening minute uses footage of African city junkyards to repeat perposterous claims that African are using a toxic leachate chemical process to extract gold from circuit boards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yGPm1U7U6s

Look, if you are claiming to make a engineering or scientific breakthrough, don't start with a blatantly false and discredited claim.  I've been visiting African scrapyards for years.

The gold bearing printed-circuit boards that come from hand-demanufacture and disassembly (an honorable process, superior to Western "Big Shred" machines designed to avoid labor) are sorted by type and either a) reused in ubiquitous repair shops in Africa, or b) sold to Chinese buyers who harvest integrated chips from the boards for remanufacturing (e.g. into lower scale toys and appliances).

The whole "acid bath" claim was bogus since Guiyu reporting in 2002.  The claims made about Agbogbloshie and other African dumps (that they import EU and USA electronics for scrap, rather than collect from generators in African cities after decades of re-use) were disproven by multiple research papers over the past 10 years.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4yGPm1U7U6s" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

@BusinessInsider is ordinarily a great journalism organization, and the rest of the story may be quite interesting aside from the postulation that white people have better processes. 

Procurement to the Rescue of the Right To Repair 2: Chess Game To Future-Proof

While I'm a big supporter of the Right To Repair legislation, a friend in an influential position at DEP (former hire, elevated to my former position) asked the Zoom group whether Right to Repair Legislation should be their top priority.

Fair Use Review

I'm always on my guard against "Group-Think".  Here were 15-20 proponents of reuse, actively engaged in DEFENSE of repair.  What did we all have in common, and how could common thought become a weakness?

In a tweet later, @WR3A (World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association, my Twitter handle created 12 years ago) I used the words "my one qualm with #RightToRepair [as a movement] is that it is backward oriented. Trying to take back too many chess moves by planned obsolescence which were already played [successfully, by OEMs]... Each new device developed or sold is the next chess game. I recommend government procurement contracts as the opening move."

Ironically, the Right to Repair twitter advocate who responded (a friendly fire incident, if I offended) responded in a quote tweet... "Made the move to influence government buying at least 6 years ago. Have the conference badges to prove it. If only it were that easy. OEMs have made sure that the GSA won't even consider buying used equipment. If only it were that easy..." 

[as if I'd dispute it? I've got them going back to 1990]

My point about Procurement isn't about government buying used equipment. It is about strategically wording FTC-backed warranty language on things the government hasn't even purchased yet. Backward Oriented, Exhibit A?

2020 GlobalEwaste Statistics Partnership. Fresh Start? Hmmmm

First, let me apologize if I got off on the wrong foot with Dr. Ruediger Kuehr of United Nations University. We were introduced to one another about 15 years ago, through indirect networks (EPA DC contacts etc). He was presented to me as a more moderate voice on the E-Waste Export debate than Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network, or Ted Smith of Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.


That's kind of typical of official reactions when one hysterical account (BAN.org) that "80% of E-Waste exported 80% of the time, and 80% of that is dumped and lost to the circular economy" is questioned sharply by someone (yours truly) who had a certain degree of credibility at the time. Regulators try to find someone at a median between Robin and The Ayatollah of EWaste, and fund them to get at the truth.

Ruediger's been at the receiving end of research funding for over a decade. And he's filled the role of compromise chef, admirably. A compromise between talented tech sector importers, and the bigots who labelled them "primitive recyclers"...

I haven't finished starting the 2020 "Global E-Waste Statistics Partnership" report, "Global EWaste Monitor 2020" yet.  But in the introduction, this paragraph stood out.

"Only 17.4% of this was officially documented as properly collected and recycled."

I see what you did there. It's a very precise statistic, down to the decimal, about what data you have. But it also continues a backhanded European narrative about the so-called "informal" sector (which I call either the Tech Sector or Scrap Sector according to what is happening).

This is #whitesplaining why the Africans I filmed (below) are not to be trusted. If they were trusted, the charitable industrial complex funding might grind to a halt.

Free Online Slide Presentation By "Secondhand" Author Adam Minter (Courtesy Massachusetts DEP)

Massachusetts DEP held a second Reuse & Reduce Workshop online this month. Dozens of state and local and institutional recycling officials were invited to watch a 40 minute presentation by Adam Minter, author of Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale.

The 45 minute presentation is now posted online, no charge. It's one of his best, thanks in large part to Star Wars references* on repair in other galaxies. But it's special to me for his nods to Chendiba Enterprises, Good Point Recycling, and WR3A.

Adam starts out by telling the truth about Guiyu, China (predicted here in our 2008 ("Big Secret Factories"), 2009 and 2010 critique of CBS 60 Minutes "Wasteland"), and 2011 blog tipping the hat to TechTravels (which showed the chip reuse I was shown in 2005's trip to Asia with Craig Lorch).

He ends by telling the truth about Accra's slum and scrapyard, Abogbloshie, in Ghana. And the third party interviews and experts he relies on are Chinese and African. And the math adds up, it does not completely fail prima facia the way Greenpeace and BAN.org's "80%" math did.

Adam Minter's photo of technician repairing a screen in an Accra importers repair shop. #righttorepair

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.


----

Facultat d'Informàtica de Barcelona Presentation: Influencing Environmental Impact of Marketplace with "Zeroknowledge"

A gigantic crane is swinging overhead, no doubt carrying some new material for the erection of another spire atop the Sagrada Familia Basilica, here in Barcelona.

It's a distraction from this week's challenge. How to explain to a group of Catalan University Professors how markets for used devices work, and how they can be measured without influencing the way they move. The title of our talk is "ZeroKnowledge". It is about the so-called "Observer Effect" in scientific study, and in particular, how data collection in "e-waste", "e-scrap", or "surplus property" can affect the policies and contracts and trade that add up to the actual outcome.

In my first chart, above, we can recognize the so-called "Circular Economy", but also the gravitational shortcuts of efficiency. When a ton does not "show up" to meet the scrap shredder/refiner/urban miner's prediction (and the hours of use of their shredding machine suffers), you cannot state that the material is "lost". It probably went into a more efficient gravitational orbit of "reuse". And countries which are good at reusing and repairing devices also tend not to throw copper away.  We may object to the way they extract the copper when the device is eventually discarded after many more years of use, but the calculation of environmental cost must be honest about the fact that brand new device production to meet the demand in emerging markets is a far worse carbon scenario. The two choices are, let them reuse and repair, or keep them in the dark (nighttime in "project eden").

But I digress. Today's talk is not about what the Waste/Mineral Policy should be, but about how the study, monitoring, regulation, certification, blockchain tracking, warranty registration, and GPS tracking devices will spin it, and to what ends.




Above are 3 slides we worked on with the Barcelona EReuse.org group.

They are working with us and a larger OBADA group to get Catalonian computer procurement officials to put into the RFP for purchase of new laptops a "blockchain" which would allow a surplus property officer at end of life to insert a USB key, find the blockchain, wipe the drive, and "inflate" a "spare tire license" such as Chromium or Linux.  The Spanish government would pay $1 per PC for "pre-wiping", which would be save $5 per HD wiping fees, and allow the PCs to be sold directly through surplus property auctions.

(longtime readers will recognize this "spare tire licence" from my first business in 2001).