Brian Taylor of Recycling Today and Robin Ingenthron of Good Point Hang Out

https://www.recyclingtoday.com/author/briantaylor/

https://www.recyclingtoday.com/media/robin-ingenthron-podcast-conversation/

Brian is an Ohio guy, or was when I met him. Straight laced, tall, friendly, but seemingly shy. I pulled up a chair to exchange journalism chatter (about my dad being a University of Arkansas Mass Communications / Journalism professor). And he asked me to pen my first Op Ed for Recycling Today  back in 2001, about this unheard of Taiwanese-Chinese factory owner no one ever heard of, Terry Gou, whose contract manufacturing factories were subcontractors for Apple, HP, Dell, etc. Han Hoi Precision Institute would later become better known as Foxconn, the company that makes the most electronics of any company in the world today, on behalf of almost every major trademark.

Brian would, years later, move from Ohio to live in Hong Kong. He stayed caught up with this blog over the next couple of decades (like Adam Minter, who was then based in Shanghai).  He could see first hand the ridiculous Beverly Hillbillies Scale of racial profiling when it came to Western depictions of the reuse, repair and recycling markets in China and the Emerging Market world in general, and like Adam Minter, has handed me a lot of water bottles on my marathon blogging - my efforts to help the West distinguish between the Brilliant Top of Class Tech Sector, and garbage burning orphans in the scrap sector (who NEVER imported ANYTHING, much less "80%" of all e-waste).

Brian and I are both now sprouting some gray whiskers, but he recently reached out to encourage me to to keep "reporting" on things like Plastic Offsets in Cameroun, or ill-informed arrests of electronics reuse diaspora in the Canary Islands. Brian covered the Biden Administration's 150-year-Anniversary attempt to Reform the General Mining Act of 1872, a law that has festered like an Orc blade tip in the Recycling Investment industry... (a bit belatedly, on the 151st anniversary, but Brian gets an A+ from me even if he turned his article in after my deadline).

Recycling Today now hosts a Podcast with interviews of Recycling Professionals, and I am honored this November to be profiled in his interview, which was held at 8AM Brian's time (now Singapore... like many others he skiddaddled from Hong Kong with his family), 8PM Vermont time.

The Noble Informal

Today's blog is just a placeholder for another I've been working on for a few days. 

The topic is my invitation to present to a group of African Environmentalists on the Topic of E-Waste Management in Africa. 

Youth in E-Waste and Greentech Summit

The paper introducing the conference quotes Global Transboundary E-Waste Flows Monitor as follows:

"According to the Global Transboundary E-waste Flows Monitor 2022, Africa generates over 2.3 million metric tons of e-waste annually, with only 1.2% of this waste being collected and recycled in an environmentally sound manner in an ecologically sound manner. The informal waste management sector handles a substantial amount of e-waste, collecting and recycling the majority through unsafe treatment methods. These practices harm the environment and pose severe health risks to women, children, workers, and fenceline communities. The informal e-waste sector's low-value recovery methods perpetuate poverty and hinder sustainable development."

I have been invited by Agabas Ayudor of Appcyclers, who spent a week at Good Point in Vermont last month learning about how hand disassembly leads to more reuse and repair than grinding and shredding.

If I'm able to present, my title will be The Noble Informal, and will focus on Retroworks de Mexico, which opened in 2007, and which for 13 years operated an e-waste demanufacturing facility in Sonora which was banned from the Tucson Arizona contract it was awarded based on the exact same made-up narrative. The Arizona companies who impugned Las Chicas Bravas as "Primitives" wound up creating the largest hazardous CRT waste pile in America - possibly the largest on earth.  The women who ran Retroworks de Mexico in fact recycled the only CRT glass from Arizona that came from that pile.

Africans presenting the dystopian rumors about Africa Tech Sector to young Africans is something that should keep European tax payers up at night.  This is 2022, not 2012, when the lid came off of Basel Action Network's 80% false claims, and the re-arrest of Joseph "Hurricane" Benson in the UK was issued based upon that false, faked, statistic.

I don't want to be pidgeonholed into writing about the same thing, but WHO IN ACADEMIA IS HOLDING GLOBAL TRANSBOUNDARY E-WASTE FLOWS MONITOR accountable for this propaganda?