Knowing Our Context: Truth is Light, Faith is Gravity

Knowing what to say which will get applause from the peers immediately surrounding me... that's the difference between a politician and a good doctor.   There are more politicians than doctors on Facebook and Twitter.

As a young man I wanted to worship the truth.  "Truth is light, faith is gravity".  I cannot function denying either.  Between any dialectic of the two, truth usually wins, and I can usually trust my sight better than my balance.  But not always, information can mislead, like a beam of light that blinds you from a wrong angle.

Off to battle.  I chose environmentalism because it's the thing we are screwing up which is most likely to be blamed by generations unborn, and I have always been fascinated by philosophers and scholars and holy men speaking to me from a distant past.    Extinction may not turn out to be "forever", there may be a tiger and dinosaur heaven, I don't know everything.  But with the information in front of me I want to make a difference that someone someday would care about without ever knowing who I was.  

That's part of what's fascinating when I hear, second hand, what some people in the industry think motivates me.   People are pretty sure by now that it's not greed.  So perhaps ol' Ingenthron's out for glory, the ego-driven explanation explains blogs and pontificatoins nicely.

While I confess I am proud of the recycling work I've done, I know that it will one day be like a ten year gig by a famous boxer (Jack Johnson), a famous orator (Martin Luther King, Jr), a famous performer (W.C. Fields), or famous engineer (H. Rembert).

Oh, you don't know Rembert?  The cotton baler (pictured above) is pretty much the same thing that drives the pre-shredding recycling industry.  Paper gets baled, ABS plastic gets baled, wire gets baled, steel gets baled... the baling area's one of the busiest places at our plant.   I correctly predicted (approximately) the employment of the Recycling Industry in Massachusetts in 1992 by counting the horizontal balers and estimated number of cars in recycling parking lots.     You could have predicted the number of slaves in the South with a good handle on the number of Eli Whitney's cotton gin sales.

When you are really focused on truth, and willing to say unpopular things, that's a secret of learning.  It makes you smarter when you weed out the platitudes aimed at applause, the tweets to the converted are a waste of electrons.

Bullyboy 9: Authority Without Borders

"Be Quiet!  I order you to be quiet!" 

- Arthur, King of the Britons, (Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

As I wrap up the "Bullyboys" case for exoneration of African traders, we are left with a simple question of authority.  Jim Puckett told me directly, a few years ago, to "stop referring people to Annex IX of the Basel Convention."  (the section that makes export for recycling, and repair, legal - so long as it isn't dumping).   It was in the form of an order.  Basel Convention was his "turf".   He drew a line and told me not to cross.

"The Magna Carta Action Group."
"The Declaration of Independence Action Network."
"The Bill of Rights Action Center."


There are lots of authoritative names a small, underemployed environmentalist can bestow himself.  Most Americans wouldn't fall for the "Associations" above.  But if you select the name of a Swiss Treaty, and say "international law" enough times, you may even get an informed journalist to report your press release as something from an authority.

Ill defined legal systems produce bullyboys.

King Arthur: I am your king.  Woman: Well I didn't vote for you. King Arthur: You don't vote for kings. Woman: Well how'd you become king then? [Angelic music plays... ] King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king. Dennis: [interrupting] Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. 

The difference between an authority and a bullyboy?  Law. Courts. Constitutions.  Consensus.   And the problem in this whole case is that there is little in the way of an international court system.  Lacking international law, and fed fake numbers by BAN.org, Europeans have reverted into bully justice.

Granted, true international law is more orderly.  I've been to the the Hague, I've been to Strasbourg.  But these are very busy places to get into.  If you are arrested in Britain for a crime you are not even accused of committing where it didn't occur in Nigeria, and think you can find a place on the International Court Docket, go buy a Megabucks lottery ticket, right now.

Laws only "happen" inside borders.  The police or Stewards or regulators who enforce international "law" are enforcing something that is extra-juridicial.   That's why treaties have to be "ratified", to give them status of law inside the borders of a nation with laws and courts and police.   Inside a border, giving "international" law to a policeman, there is otherwise no constitutional basis for appeal.

Your sole appeal is to the bully-boy.

Agenda Shifting: Startup Rising (Christopher M. Schroeder)

Just saw a very interesting interview by my man Fareed Zakaria on GPS (CNN) of Christopher M. Schroeder, author of Startup Rising.  (Review here by Kira Newman of "Tech Cocktail").


We have seen the exponential growth in interaction and information sharing, described by Schroeder, before.  Media devices are to the Age of Entrepreneurship, or Startup Rising, what paper and printing presses were to the Age of Enlightenment.

English Short Title Catalogue 1470-1790.

The Geeks of Color who I dedicate this blog to are not just being underappreciated, under-noticed, and underutilized (as the CNN coverage suggests).  They are being profiled by faux environmentalists, targeted by Anti-Gray-Market corporations, and actually arrested (Joseph Benson) or their goods seized (Hamdy Mousa), see Environmental Malpractice blogs.

The kind of "witches brew" enforcement by Interpol's "Project Eden" is overseen ghoulishly at USA EPA by none other than the Environmental Justice department.  It is an Orwellian Scale of dysfunction.  Black is white, up is down, recycling is waste, reuse is dumping, progress is degradation, freedom is exploitation.

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.

Africa: The Secret of Happiness Continent

The past month I've spent a lot of time talking about Africa and Africans.  I lived there, and like pal Martijn van Engelen (Netherlands) found people in Africa to be - follow me here - happier than Americans and Europeans, on average.

Mon frere

Some speculate that "Stuff" and "Belongings" make people unhappy.  Many religions teach or preach happiness with sacrifice (which has been depicted, cynically by Marxists, as "opium of the people").  But capitalists marketing that "stuff" will make you happy have even less credibility, in my humble opinion.  Happiness is not related very directly to possessions.

As I describe in my Facebook status yesterday (bottom), I think that defining your happiness according to what someone else has that you are taught (through marketing and advertising) to covet is a major mistake.  Happiness is a skill.  When babies laugh and giggle, their brains are wired to smile for the rest of their lives.

Africa's secret to happiness, perhaps, is people.  Commonly it's a culture of smiles.  People in harsh situations tend to be polite, and friendly, and to help out.  In Cameroon, no matter HOW poor a family was, they fed me (even if I wasn't hungry, they insisted).

I don't think that it is the "stuff" that makes people unhappy.  I think it starts out with how we are raised, with a sense of humor.  And I'm not saying every African has the same sense of humor, or smiles the same.  But the preponderance of unhappy, unsmiling, pouty faces from Africa in BAN's Pieter Hugo poster child campaign is unnatural.