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?  

Here's a blog from 2009 making all of these same points about the legality of the reuse "Transboundary" movements, and the harm done by blighting recycling "by hand" https://retroworks.blogspot.com/2009/12/basel-convention-next-chapter.html

The fact that Global Transboundary E-Waste Flows Monitor is describing recycling as both unmonitored, informal, and admits they know basically NOTHING about it, displays that Europe continues to impugn Africa's Tech Sector and Scrap Sector without admitting that the Agbogbloshie E-Waste Hoax has been completely disproven.

scycle@unitar.org