onelookleft

Just left a comment over on Tim Ferriss’ blog. Latest post there is a competition of noble intent to persuade mobile phone manufacturers and other industry participants to take more responsibility for recycling phones

This is a great idea with regards to leveragin crowd-sourced activism for a good cause, and for that it is of high merit. But I think it misses the point a bit… So, here’s the comments I left (just in case they don’t pass moderation!), with a few slight changes - noted in italics - for context…

“yup, like CS Thompson [another comment poster] in Austrlaia, here in New Zealand we have the “recycle” bins in all the phone retailers… About as convenient as popping out to the shops…

But, as Marvin points out - I’m pretty sure that just speeds up the transfer of the phones to landfill. They may well be better off sitting in the top drawer of your side unit for decades to come - much harder to pollute waterways and destroy soil tables when they’re not stored en masse [i.e. if all these phones are ultimately going to landfill, that’s worse than having them scattered around millions of homes, offices, and car dashboards…]

Tim [attempting to address Tim Ferriss directly] - doesn’t your book [Tim Ferris’ book ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’- a great read] say that there’s no point making a process more efficient if it’s not effective? - So, I think you need to address the “effective” side of your challenge - “to make good behavior convenient, helping us and the planet” doesn’t go nearly far enough…..

So, what we really need to address is:
1] reduction of harmful materials going into phones in the first place
2] reduction of demand (marvin’s idea)
3] for phones that do still need to be recycled - not just convenient (efficient) but real (effective) - whatever that is?

That’s the real bounty.”

Further thoughts welcomed here…

Just watched a clip on ‘Close Up’ about share-farming - where a farmer provides shares in his / her farm to the local community, who then gain a share of each crop (as well as corresponding risk of a bad crop or low yield year). The clip included feel-good shots of the local kids and their parents haleping to tend the harvest….

 Pretty much full circle then - back to food production as a central activity of a community, in the geo-local sense of the word. What do I mean? - Agriculture is a founding tenet of sedentary societies, the basis of early economies, and a pre-cursor of capitalism and other socio-economic forms.

 So, all this got me to thnking - is it OK to profit from food?

so!….
finally sorted out my hosting account (thanks godaddy), and then installed WordPress - the onelookleft blog is live!
not too sure about the design yet, perhaps a few changes soon…
need to finish some other priorities now, then back to a real post shortly…