Procurement to the Rescue of the Right To Repair

 I've provided several written and oral testimony on behalf of "Right To Repair" Laws in several states. What prepares me for the discussion is over 3 decades of interest in Warranty Law, Planned Obsolescence, Trademark and Patent Law.

Here's the thing. Most of the testimony in favor of Right To Repair is based on past Planned Obsolescence techniques. Most of the testimony AGAINST Right to Repair is based on scary things that might occur in the future, if OEMs are forced to stop blocking independents (who according to OEM TV ads are far more likely to stalk you than OEM repair shops).

But the VERY SCARY future is based on what Planned Obsolescence has in mind. 

Profile of Critical Thinking, Mistakes, and Systemic Language

Through approximately 13 years of blogs, I've made a number of errors. There are too many blogs now to really go back and change. And arguably it's a mistake to edit the history of the thought, it is a snapshot of evolution.

When my dear friend and co-founder of the company, Yadji Moussa, drowned eight years ago, I wrote a rather passionate eulogy. I wanted to be honest and not cover up some of Yadji's problems - he had lost his family through drinking and in the 12 years he lived in Middlebury and worked with me, he'd spent an enormous percent of his paychecks frivolously. I thought I'd also been equally complimentary about why he'd been my best friend in Cameroon, and why his family in Michigan still loved him as much as I did. 

Well, I didn't accomplish a Neil Young song about the setting sun. And a stranger from University of Vermont chimed into the comment section about all of the ways my tribute/critique of Yadji's life were implicitly racist.

New Rule: Person with most knowledge of a device...

From waste colonialism to environmentalism 3.0

New rule: Person with the most knowledge about repair of, and demand for, the device gets to define if it is waste to her/him. Basel definition of waste originally recognized this, but rich countries exploited power to define it.

This is "systematic". The privileged folks with the most knowledge of the Basel Convention SYSTEM are able to knock out competitors in reuse, repair and re-manufacturing. Planned Obsolescence and Big Shred financial interests amplify boneheaded false statistics based NGOs, in a #CharitableIndustrialComplex.

German and Vermont Plastic Bans - Go Fund Me a Mountain

So first the headline - Germany takes the initiative to ban all single use plastics by July 2021. It's being applauded and heralded all over Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter. See coverage on ABC News this morning:

Germany bans single-use plastic straws, food containers

Germany is banning the sale of single-use plastic straws, cotton buds and food containers (AP)

Here is a better idea. Support our Fair Trade Recycling Offset plan. I've been talking about it for years, and have now set up a GoFundMe page with a goal of $25,000.  We will then pay for litter collection out of Ghana streets in the weeks before the monsoon rain washes thousands of tons of plastic litter into the ocean we all share.

(Ed. - Originally, FTR's Offset Program was launched specifically for e-waste recovery. We now see ocean-bound plastic as the main target. Our estimate is that it costs $1000 of effort to collect one additional ton of properly sorted plastics from a mature USA recycling program. By contrast the same $1000 would pay to divert ten tons of ocean-bound plastic from Africa's cities, before a monsoon washes that plastic out to sea, where it will cost $10,000 to capture the one ton again).

Vermont's plastic bags are not the problem. Voting to ban the plastic is little more than virtue signalling. Recall where ocean litter comes from.

Plastic recyclers in Tamale, Ghana

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.