Box::leak. Assuming the object you're leaking contains no references, it can then live for 'static (the lifetime of the process)
> allocate a buffer at startup and let the system clean it up when the program exits
This is possible with the lazy_static library or (not yet in stable Rust) OnceCell. It allows you to allocate & initialize any datastructure once during runtime and get global read-only access.
One obvious corner case: It is very common to allocate a buffer at startup and let the system clean it up when the program exits. (often this is embedded cases where the only way for the program to exit is power off). I don't know how you do this in rust (if you can - I'm not a rust expert)