2023 To Kill A Reuse Mockingbird: The Canary Islands E-Waste Black Man's Burden - of Proof

The "Hurricane" Joe Benson Saga continues in Sequel.The press announcements this week were short, but provided a few details... UPDATE: EUROPOL press release with actual photos discloses 750,000 kg - not 3M - were used electronics.

Here's a link to one of the articles on LinkedIn, which I posted.  It has an argument ongoing in the comment and replies section which includes SWEEEP Kuusakoski referencing the BBC Reggie Yates documentary about Agbogbloshie... Kuusakowski's representative ends his scolding reply with the words "I have been to Ghana."

Sir?  Hold. My. Coffee.

It was a sin to kill a mockingbird - in Harper Lee's 1960 novel, or in a 2011 blog about Indonesia... and it's a sin to kill a Canary in 2023.  In case after case, it has been about the burden of proof imposed upon an African tech sector and their family diaspora networks. 

Their burden (like the accused Tom Robinson) is the white man's presumption of guilt.  Ironically, this is not the usual meaning of "White Man's Burden", but the imposition of INTERPOL and Spanish Police to "save Africans from waste" is mind bending. What "proof of reuse" (the defense Canary Island diaspora must present against "presumed waste" communicates about the scales of justice is communicated in the headline - that the Spanish arrested "criminals" rather than "accused" them.

More from the headlines... 

Spanish police have broken up a criminal group that smuggled over 5,000 tonnes of hazardous electronic waste from Spain's Canary Islands to several African countries, authorities said Tuesday.

"The network allegedly forged customs documents for the exported waste to make it seem that the containers held second-hand goods, in an operation valued at over 1.5 million euros. Most of the trash was sent to Ghana, Mauritania, Nigeria and Senegal. Africa has become a major dumping ground for discarded electronics from around the world, known as e-waste.  This is often burned to extract minerals such as aluminium and copper that can fetch a high value when resold.

To an experienced recycler like me, it's patently obvious that you cannot get 1.5 million Euros out of 331 138 sea containers unless the Africans are telling the truth, that the goods are reused. The claim that the items can be burned for metals which "fetch" a high enough value to pay for the cost of shipping, let alone the $1.5M in profit, is PROOF that the Africans not only intended reuse, but certainly HAD to be successful at it.  If the very first container had 50% waste, it would lose so much money that no one could send 300 more of them.  This is why "Project Eden" was prematurely ended. Spain's Canary Island regulators must have missed the memo.

331 138 sea containers x 20 tons per containerload (largest container assumed) does add up to about 6,000 tons 750,000 kgs (updated Europol) over 3 2 years. But for 2.2M population - plus 5.3M international tourists per year who visit the giant hotel/hospitality economy - how significant is that? 3,000 tons per year is about what we pick up from Vermont (population 650,000) collections. If Spain's generation isn't too different from Vermont, 2k 375 tons of exports per year - the amount exported - would be 9.2 3 lbs per person, which - not including tourists - would be out of a projected 10,400 tons (Canary Island population at Vermont's average rate) ... an export for reuse claim of about 20% 3.6%

But keep in mind, the African Tech Sector prefers hotel takeouts - when hundreds of working TVs are replaced in rooms for wider, flatter upgrades... More on that math below.

That case sounds exactly like the court documents obtained from the Joe "Hurricane" Benson case, in which his container bills of lading were declared "fraud" because they listed "for reuse" when the prosecutor proclaimed "common knowledge" (see photos of hotel TVs BAN and Greenpeace declared were headed for Agbogbloshie) that it was over 50% waste.  There was no evidence presented by the prosecution about what in the containerloads was and wass not reusable, what can and cannot be marketed, and therefore the international law (Basel Convention Annex IX B1110) which allows reuse was deemed null and void.  

Why do I suspect the Canary Islands case is as clear cut as Joe "Hurricane" Bensons? Well, aside from 20 years of experience that the buyers know more about their stuff than the Stuff animators, consider this:

1. Container outgoing shipment costs from Canary Islands is very high. While it looks closer to Accra on a map, the way sea containers work is that the load has to go to Valencia or Rotterdam as there isn't enough sales from Canary Islands to Africa to fill a ship. This would be an expensive way to get copper scrap to be burned, and there's no evidence that the Africans were paid a disposal fee.

2. 331 containers over 3 years (per the prosecution) could easily be filled 100% with hotel upgrades - where West Africa diaspora tries to fill most of their orders as hotels upgrade to larger screens.  The island of Gran Canaria on its own has 46,740 hotel guest capacity - Tenerif 56,791, etc. (statistica.com)

Most of the costs of e-waste generated in a tourist economy like the Canary Islands (where the "crime" occurred) are CRTs, and I will bet right here and right now, the 331 sea containers paid for by the African Diaspora network didn't contain any. In fact, for the entire population of the Canary Islands PLUS the hospitality industry favored by African reuse, 331 loads in 3 years would be less than 5% of estimated e-waste generation.  For the Africans to be prioritizing crap to burn "primitively" in Agbogbloshie, you'd have to accuse them of being idiots.

3. The accusation itself shows no diligence by the prosecutor. The press release says that it's presumed to be mostly waste because it was shipped to Africa, not because of what the shipper declared to be in a container. Atticus Finch, where are you?

They are being attacked as e-waste exported for cherry picking. That's the only economic explanation, and it's the one they claim.  The article basically accusest them of faking "cherries" and exporting crap to avoid the expense of paying the Spanish e-waste contractor... who shows up in the comment section of my post.

So I will try to find the defense attorney and hope they don't get intimidated (like Joseph Benson) into a plea agreement (after he lost his home to the court expenses - he declared himself innocent on video). And before (as I suspect for Benson) they sign a gag order as a condition of leniency.

This photo shows a sculpture by a European Artist in an Amsterdam modern art museum, "influenced by" West African art (Cameroon, Benin and Ghana are all mentioned). At the end of the room is a painting by Spanish artist Picasso, which the museum states was also influenced by the "exoticism" used to depict most of the colonies and diaspora one hundred years ago.

Ok, I'm blogging for swordfish again. This will probably take too much time to edit, but cut to the chase - after 20 years Western e-waste companies are still slinging mud at the reuse Tech Sector, and are racially profiling them as evil victims of their own ignorance.

Link back to 2011 blog "To Kill an Indonesian Mockingbird" if you want a preview of this horror remake.

The arrests mean that an allegation has been made.  Since secondhand goods are legal to import to Africa via Basel Convention and Bamako Convention (and Ghana is not a signatory), the only crime from Africa's point of view is if the Africans falsely identified "waste" which was not intended for reuse as working or repairable.  The article claims that the Diaspora lied and paid for waste, paid to put the waste in containers, and paid customs duties on it after paying shipping costs, to dump it on their own family members.

Now... back to the first link, the story posted by me on Linkedin. I invite you back to the comment section. There's some real inside-baseball going on... the same company who Joe Benson said accused him to British authorities for exporting hotel TVs from England is attacking my questions about "burden of proof". 

At this point, after more than 15 years of opportunities to get the story straight, what we have here is an allegation that the Diaspora - Africans living and working in the EU, who spot and purchase used goods for friends and family in the secondhand Tech Sector in their home countries, are "dumping" waste to avoid costs they supposedly take on voluntarily... an allegation of stupidity, supported not by any evidence or data.

To Kill A Mockingbird.  This is racism.  The white guys accuse the black guys of buying "e-waste" to ship at a loss and dump on their own countrymen... without any financial incentive possible other than the reuse value the export-import diaspora claims.  The claim that they collect from Spanish residents in Gran Canaria to cheat Kuusakoski SWEEEP out of copper profits has a simple explanation - if the goods are working and repairable, they are worth much more than the copper Kuusakoski desires. So much more that they can arrange one of the highest shipping container fees on earth - islands like Canaries and African ports.

Place:  Canary Islands.  I last visited there in 1990. It's a territory of Spain, a group of Desert Islands in the mid Atlantic, off the coast of Africa's Western Sahara (one of the most sparsely populated arid deserts in the world, a long-disputed territory claimed by both Morocco and independent since 1975 when Spain abandoned the place). Like the adjacent African territory, the Canary Islands are almost devoid of trees. Today, its economy is almost 100% retirees and tourists.

The Canary Islands (/kəˈnɛəri/; Spanish: Canarias, pronounced [kaˈnaɾjas]), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in Macaronesia. At their closest point to the African mainland, they are 100 kilometres (62 miles) west of Morocco. They are the southernmost of the autonomous communities of Spain. The islands have a population of 2.2 million people and they are the most populous special territory of the European Union.^[5][6]

In July, 1990, I arrived as one of those tourist for my honeymoon.  We spent about a week on Gran Canaria. If I can find a way to meet the accused, and their defense attorney, I intend to fly back for a "second honeymoon" this year.