The Basel Convention: Bayesian Soup Nazi Episode

Ok, Another E-Scrap Conference, and another allusion to an American comedy.  I hope my international readers will be patient.

R2 or E-Steward?  Who has the best recipe?

Yesterday's E-Scrap 2012 Conference in Dallas had two sessions worth writing about.   John Lingelbach of R2 and Jim Puckett presented on the two certification programs for Electronics Recyclers (along with auditor Kelley Keough of Greeneye).   Later, Travis Reed Miller of MIT presented on the use of Bayesian predictors to refine data, and Laura Bloodgood of US International Trade Office reported (without data) on the survey work on 900+ e-scrap firms.

The session with BAN E-Stewards and R2 was very amicable.  Sitting in the audience, I couldn't help but feel bad for having taken Puckett tiredly to task the day before in the blog.  They seemed to narrow the "disagreement" between the two programs down as follows:

1. E-Stewards is expensive.  And R2, while cheaper, is unsustainable (it needs to be more expensive).
2. BAN - a little unclearly, I thought - described their belief in evolving WITH a Basel Convention group.  The Basel Ban Amendment - not passed - should be incorporated in the standard because they are confident it will be passed.  The E-Steward position on export of goods for repair, while CLEARLY on the list of Annex IX "non-waste" activities, is that they should be held to a standard of a recent committee at Basel Meetings... ie not to International Law, but held to the amendment of the international law which the non-profit NGO promotes for a living).

This "adherence to promoted future law" of course is what frightens the USA away from Ratifying Basel Convention.   The USA Congress might agree with everything in a convention as written, and then Jim Puckett may make a presentation in Jakarta or Columbia, and the non-elected international group of attendees may vote that repair, allowed in the Convention, should no longer be allowed.  In that case the USA has passed a law which gives a non-elected international  interest group, effectively, regulatory power over USA companies.  UN Treaty 101.

English Lesson: Recycle is a verb

Recycling is the present continuous form of the verb "to recycle".  Scrap and commodity are nouns.

"Recycled" can be either a modifier or a past participle of the verb "to recycle".  "Recycled content" (modifier) means that something made of steel is remelted and molded into something new made of steel.

Steel is rarely discarded or diverted from a landfill... But by virtue of the fact it has been remelted, it now has a "recycled content" label attached as a modifier.  "I recycled the steel" means it's still a verb if the subject doing the recycling is in the sentence, but in passive voice - "the steel was recycled", it becomes "recycled content steel".  Maybe I'm 6th generation steel recycler, and I've never even heard of someone throwing steel away in an incinerators or landfills.  If they did I'd pay for it out of the ash, it's always been a commodity to me as a recycler.  But even if I never pulled it from the ash or landfill, even if I came to your house and bought it, I've become part of a "waste management hierarchy".   How come my job is being redefined as "waste management" based on someone else stupidly throwing steel away?

Here's the slippery slope which lead secondary materials into a different category from mined ore, via lingo from the point of view of rich people, applied to poor people, who are assumed to be victims.