#CircularEconomy? Beware of Virginia Recycling Companies Bearing Gifts

Shared by an old academic pal this afternoon.... This news story "speaks for itself" even if no one interviewed seems to understand the massive cost diversion.

The disguised recycler not only gets out of paying for the dismantling and recycling of the CRTs, he'll potentially be paid a second time to recycle them again.  That's one evil Santa.



The solution is not dilution.

Another Rich Story Ends: Yadji Moussa

Yadji Moussa was a man I met in Cameroon.  He became my most trusted friend there.  We spent many mornings speaking philosophy, over a cup of sugared tea into which I'd dip the fresh local bread. I trusted him to give it to me straight if I wanted to know the "African Street".  He kept me under his wing.


He told me he had problems in the past, that he had been at "rock bottom", and described those tough times in detail, with humor, making me laugh.  


During the 30 months I lived there, he only seemed to do better and better.  I have written about times that he was a hero in the town of Ngaoundal in Adamawa Province.  He had a way of being covertly confrontational, leaving friends and authorities to puzzle whether he was religiously passive, or feigning self-effacement, or ready to cut to the chase with a direct challenge.

He continued to do better and better after I left Cameroon, and Renee, my peace corps volunteer replacement, agreed he was something special.   They married and had two kids, Innah and Adamou, and returned to the USA to live in Michigan, around 1989 or 1990 I think.


He revisited rock bottom a few times, and the marriage broke up in 2000.   I owed him a lot from my time in Cameroon, and brought him to Vermont to start a business with me.  Yadji worked with me for 12 years in Middlebury.  

Yadji drowned June 21, while I was celebrating my twins birthdays in Arkansas.  I got a lot of calls in the spotty coverage of the Ozarks.  I wrote most of the blog while sitting in my parents living room in Searcy County, trying to decide whether to take my kids canoeing on the Buffalo River.  We decided to return and assist with the arrangements for Yadji, who for many years I described as my best friend, and for many times I was furious with, as only a brother can be.  I've decided to give this rewrite, to give the record another shot, because Yadji Moussa deserves the best.

Happy Loving Day 2012: Right to Share Lives

This is a terrific website, set up to celebrate the outcome of the Loving Case of 1967.  I wrote about the Loving case on Valentine's day.

Don't have time to write much more about it today.   Mr. and Ms. Loving were a real couple who fought for their right to marry regardless of race.

This pertains to Fair Trade Recycling very simply.  The case made in defense of the Virginia law banning their marriage was based on statistics and fear.   They tried to justify the ban on interracial marriage with horrible anecdotes about all the things that can go wrong.

That is how the backers of HR2284 describe my trade with Las Chicas Bravas, refurbishers in southeast Asia, and geeks in Africa.   Because it might go wrong, I should be banned from doing business there.

So we ban Peace Corps volunteers from starting small businesses aimed at proper recycling, repair and refurbishment in the countries they lived in.  Perfect thinking.  It helps you to imagine the attitudes of the people, long passed away, who argued against women's suffrage, argued against voting by non-land-owners, who argued against popular democracy.

We are lucky to be arguing about fair trade recycling, at least from our side of the ocean.  The people being accused of being primitive idiots and having their containers of computers seized by dictators in Africa - not so much.  A ban on the export of used computers, as "e-waste", is based on what someone else is accused of doing, not what we are doing, and not even what most exporters are doing.  The right to share my life with people who repair and recycle computers in countries which need it is not something EPA or Congress or Vermont ANR should attempt to infringe on based on photos of black children taken at landfills.

Valentines Day: Loving v. Virginia 1967

From Wikipedia 2012.02.14

Mildred Delores Jeter Loving (July 22, 1939 – May 2, 2008) and her husband Richard Perry Loving (October 29, 1933 – June 29, 1975) were plaintiffs in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia (1967).

The Lovings were an interracial married couple who were criminally charged under a Virginia statute banning such marriages. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Lovings filed suit seeking to overturn the law. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in their favor, striking down the Virginia statute and all state anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional violations of the Fourteenth Amendment.^[1]

I was 5 years old.  My folks told me it was sad that people wanted to interfere with this couples marriage, but you had to worry how their kids would grow up.   Well, their kids would grow up to see a half black half white president.   Sometimes externalizing costs is also externalizing benefits, and it's known as sharing, and it's none of your damn business.  I am absolutely certain that the outcome of fair trade is not going to be any of the disasters or horrific exploitation promised by the anti-export campaign.  Happy Valentines Day...