Recycling Is Not a "LIE": Part 3. Alexander Clapp says I'm an Expert?

 

Waste Wars: A Journey Through the World of Globalized Trash

Forthcoming from Little, Brown & Company

Try out this logic.  

"Health Care Is a LIE, because everyone receiving health care will eventually die".

So I just found out that Alexander Clapp, author of the NYTimes Opinion editorial saying that Recycling Is a Lie, quotes me personally as an expert. Page 135. 

Yet, he does not respond to my direct messages, offers to dialogue, or follows (Linkedin, BlueSky, XTwitter)... So I'm following his posts and will buy a used copy of his book when it is available, but this "Health Care Is a Lie" logic is patently false.  

The 2006 NIH Report by Charles Schmidt, where the misleading quote is pulled from, was based on a trip I made to Asia 20 years ago with Total Reclaim of Seattle president Craig Lorch, and native (2nd generation) Mandarin speaker Lin King of WR3A.org and University of California (recycling program manager).  I had not been to Africa since 1987, and was trying to explain to Mr. Schmidt that the HUGE CONTRACT MANUFACTURERS IN ASIA - SUBCONTRACTORS FOR DELL, HP, ETC. were certainly not importing 80% waste. When he asked about Africa importers, I knew that they were not running 50+ huge factories with up to 1500 employees, 3 shifts a day, seven days per week.  And during that interview, I was also trying to remain friends with Mr. Jim Puckett who was making the (false) claim that 80% of used electronics trade violated the Basel Convention.

AFTER this interview with NIH Schmidt, the following occured.

1. I went to visit our buyers in Africa - with my whole family - and learned that they were Tech Sector professionals who knew WAY more about the electronics they were purchasing than USA recyclers did.

2. I sent multiple emails to the 2006 study author between 2006 (when I complained about the coverage even then) leading right up to 2013, when I invited him to attend the Middlebury Fair Trade Recycling Summit. See email to the author at bottom, with the list of speakers and experts meeting to discuss the "e-waste hoax" BAN had by that time created.  

3. 2013 was the year Jim Puckett of BAN disavowed his own claims in the 2006 Charles Schmidt NIH study - actually claiming he had never ever made the 80% illegal export claims.

In a sample email to Schmidt copied above, I was imploring him to update the 2006 study I'm quoted from, and he submitted my offer to his editor at NIH, who in 2011 turned it down.  Instead, Adam Minter that year visited multiple importers (and domestic Chinese e-waste buyers) for his book, Junkyard Planet.  Which like his second book, Secondhand, interviewed me and our WR3A members directly and on multiple occasions visited them.  

Recycling Is NOT a "LIE" Part 2. Alexander Clapp Fails Math On Plastic Recycling

Plastic recycling is not a lie. It's not perfect, but if you have to choose how your fresh spinach leaves are sold to people who live in Vermont, steel cans, copper, glass and paper may be easier to recycle at the end of package life... but lifecycle analysis of mining and refining and transportation also count for the environment. We need to keep working to fix the parts of plastic recycling that are not working, but attacking the plastic recyclers who ARE WORKING is shameful. Lying about PETE bottle bill plastic recycling will not fix the recycling prospects for a microgram of toothbrush at its end of life.

In part 1 of "Recycling is not a Lie" we shared just how aggravating it is to have African Geeks in the Tech Sector profiled as landfill scavengers. Yes they are both black, and yes they both make less money that the white guy running mobile phones through a shredder while wearing a white lab coat.  In the same kind of way, successful plastic recycling companies are being cast as failures because the word "plastic recycling" doesn't cover the toothbrush.  In both cases, the arrogant claim that "Recycling Is A Lie" profiles honest, incredible people as shameful.

PETE (#1) and HDPE (#2) Plastics are incredibly successful. They are not subsidized, they are not "a lie", and they are not thrown away at the recycling facilities. People who are telling us that may have a legitimate gripe about the film plastic your spinach leaves were transported in, but they don't have an answer other than "don't eat your spinach".  They might imagine that spinach farmers in Mexico will successfully ship it 3000 miles without most of it spoiling, or being packaged in material far heavier to transport and more harmful in lifecycle analysis (see Oregon DEP study on paper bags vs. single use plastic). But doing so, they imagine they are more truthful than Malaysian Plastic Recycling Factories.

I'll focus on Malaysia, because Malaysia and Indonesia are getting a lot of recycling hate, and I've got experience with successful plastic recyclers - inventors and investors - in both nations. Both nations have been "Asian Tigers", economies who have muslim-majority DEMOCRACIES. There is plenty to criticize (extinction of orangutans for palm oil plantations for starters), but attacking their plastic recyclers is just ignorant.

I have learned the hard way that it is dangerous to single out a single recycler unless they are already (a la Joe "Hurricane" Benson in the UK, or Semarang Indonesia's PT Imtech) falsely accused.  Saying "what is wrong with this factory" has drawn sick attacks, like Jim Puckett's letter shutting down my friends at Net Peripheral in Penang Malaysia after Adam Minter visited them and wrote about them in Recycling International. But let's just look at the largest Malaysia recycler on this list.

Oliver Franklin-Wallis, reporter at The Guardian and author of Wasteland, at least accepted my invitations to meet and speak about the potential for "collateral damage" in Emerging Markets. He visited Evans Quaye's shop in Accra (the smallest electronics refurbished I could risk introducing him to), and as a result wrote a nuanced chapter about his capacity to judge Africa's Tech Sector.  And to his credit, he admitted to me he had not visited a single plastic recycler in Malaysia or Indonesia while writing about their businesses (blamed covid travel restrictions). Oli is honest.  But Alexander Clapp has not responded to any of my twitter or Linkedin invitations.  Alexander Clapp is the one who told the NYTimes that people like me are LYING about recycling.

Here is a plastic recycling plant my Fair Trade Recycling Team visited in Semarang Indonesia about 15 years ago, when the factory was being "outed" by Basel Action Network as a "primitive" operation. We verified their ISO Certifications and photographed their ABS and HiPS plastic recycling lines. Colin Davis, my former VP and Middlebury College Grad (now CEO at Shacksbury Cider) visited in 2009 (I think).

This factory used plastic from used computer monitor housings - removing their paper and foil labels - to peletize them, adding black die, and made brand new computer monitor plastic housings out of 100% recycled plastic.  Was the factory perfect? No, but it made brand new computer monitors as a contract manufacturer to OEMs before converting to a recycling and reuse operation... so making computer monitors out of old computer monitors seems like progress to me. The plastic was just one part of the operation - they reused 4 year old CRTs to make affordable new TVs and monitors as well... while USA companies were grinding those CRTs up to make abandoned piles of toxic dust, and accusing this factory (through BAN.org) of lying.  That was more than 15 years ago... my guess is that Alexander Clapp was in Junior High School at the time. Now he's "recycling" Puckett's stories about these genius entrepreneurs... sigh. Maybe someone in his friends and family circle will read this and suggest he is only "holding up a mirror" to factless journalism.

So back to the present day.  I've posted the image and link to the list of the largest plastic recyclers operating in Malaysia as of 2023.  Clapp and Puckett have accused the largest factory (in that they have accused ALL of them) of operating illegally.

The factory claims to recycle 60,000 tons per year of HDPE (milk jug), LDPE (film), and PP Plastic grades into pellets that can be extruded to make new products.  Putting a photo of domestically generated Indonesia river mixed-plastic litter hardly disqualifies their claims to employe hundreds of staff, or their ISO 14001 certification, or their import permits.  If Alexander Clapp wants to accuse this factory of lying, he has had more than 10 years to visit and show us how they manage to pay for the plastic (PETE and HDPE scrap sell for much more per ton than paper), pay for shipping, employ hundreds, document residuals management, and somehow are "lying" and somehow responsible for plastic litter in an Indonesian river thousands of kilometers away.

Burden of proof much?

Recycling Is NOT a "LIE". Alexander Clapp Fails Math Racially Profiles Geeks of Color

New York Times Opinion Editor Tim Schneider introduced us all to another "tell all" author, Alexander Clapp, with the headline "The Story You've Been Told about Recycling is a Lie".  It's been forwarded to me by a half dozen colleagues, readers, and scholars, who know that these "Recycling is a Lie" claims have been the whole reason this blog exists. 

It's strange.  "Health Care is a Lie".  "Barber Shops are a Lie". We never see those finger waving headlines.  But somehow a writer gets a flight - and yes, Alexander Clapp's focus in the Op Ed is on Agbogbloshie, in central Ghana - stays in a hotel and spends a few days with poor African primary school dropouts who burn wire (mostly from automobile harnesses, not electronics) which been in use in the city since the Akosomba Hydroelectric Dam was built in the mid 1960s.  And how he's an expert, telling everyone that people like me are lying about recycling.

I will start by disproving Mr. Clapp's completely false claims about Agbogbloshie, and then if I have time, take on his judgement of plastic recycling in Southeast Asia - which I've also visited decades ago.

Funny how Agbogbloshie is in the highest electricity consuming city - per capita - in subsaharan Africa... 100% electricity access. But Alexander Clapp finds TVs in the city dump, and jumps to a bizarre conclusion. 

Tim Schneider, let's start by taking about ELECTRICITY in Ghana (NASA, 2018), the number of televisions per household, and see if you can distinguish between the geniuses in Africa's Tech Sector and the primary school dropouts in Agbobloshie, and how the mystery is how good African Techs are and why that explains there is so very little E-Waste in Accra City dumps compared to a city of 5M in the US or Europe.  I sent Mr. Clapp a link to a 2011 Op Ed I had published in Vice, and sent him a Linkedin and X.com invitation to meet.

To the NY Times Editors (Tim Schneider et. al.)

While international Recycling is certainly not perfect, the patently false claims made by Alexander Clapp author of a new book Waste Wars: in "Recycling Is a Lie" have been called out by dozens of University research studies and noted authors such as Adam Minter (Bloomberg columnist and author of Junkyard Planet and Secondhand). 

I will start with my many filmed interviews of the so-called burner boys of the Agbognloshie described in the piece, at the scrap yard in Accra Ghana, whom I've introduced not just to Minter, but to many other reporters with integrity.

No one has ever seen a sea container unloaded there.  The idea that African city junkyards are fed directly by USA exports is absurd to anyone who has spent any significant number of years there (as I have).

The E-Waste there is collected from the streets of the city of 5 million by men with push carts. They collect it from the millions of businesses and households in Ghana who have had electricity since the 1960s. 

If you search for World Bank data on televisions per household since 1999 in greater Accra, the glaring question is why there are so few e-waste tons at the city dump.

The answer is that they repair and reuse electronics far longer than wealthy westerners do. Yes, Africans do conservation better than we do. A lot better. Poor people tend not to throw working stuff away.

Data exists.  Electricity consumption. Televisions per household. Lack of sales of new electronics. If the electronics they buy and test are really burned as junk, what is using the electricity and creating the blackouts and brownouts from record demand? If there were over 300 TV stations in Africa when I first arrived in 1984, who was watching them? Where did the critical mass of users (UN term) come from who made those investments possible? There were no BestBuys or Walmarts. But there were thousands of talented Geeks of Color, who deserve credit for creating African Mass Communications. Summing them all up as wire burners is a liberal own-goal.

It's distressing that authors fail to interview ANY, not one of, the talented importers in Africa's tech sector, and to see the NYT profile them as wire burners is painful. Those wire burners (who I also know pretty well), by the way are mostly burning automobile harness wire from the scrap automobiles. Racial profiling is not something do-gooders are immune to.

If you don't do any secondary research and expect a city of 5 million people to have a dump full of coconut shells and banana peels, it hardly qualifies you to call Africa's talented tech sector liars about what they are capable of selecting testing and reusing.  The Op Ed calling us liars doesn't have any data at all. The words "much of" did not use to pass editorial muster.

I don't have time to explain how plastic buyers fly here and inspect the plastic they buy and pay for not just the plastic but the shipping and the customs fees. But start with plastic consumption in rapidly emerging markets and you see that the plastic waste photojournalists see there was domestically generated. 

Who is the liar?

My son (now 28) spent a 7 week internship with Karim, a TV refurbisher in Ghana while at Middlebury College.  There is just no way Alexander Clapp can pass himself off as an expert if he believes wire burners are buying used electronics from Americans.

How can you explain the electricity, the TV stations, the traffic, the mobile phone towers in Africa if you are so much better at recycling and repairing than they are?

See the youtube video by Alex Wondergam, "In The Life:  Scrap Metal Men" to see how the scrap at Agbogbloshie is collected, busines-by-business, house-by-houses, street by street.  And you will start to get a feel for the mystery here - why is the Accra dump so SMALL?????  Because of men like Karim.  And I wanted to make sure people in my son's generation got to experience circuit-board-level repairs that Americans once did 50 years ago.

Same history in Asia, by the way. I wonder if Alexander Clapp or Tim Schneider has ever heard of Simon Lin, Terry Gou, or Lee Kun-hee?  All three started out like Karim.  As did Steve Jobs and Michael Dell.  See? If you can stop racially profiling the Tech Sector as "primitive recyclers" you might learn what I did.

Avoiding Waste Vocabulary: A Critical Perspective on Raw Materials and Global Trade

This blog has often been based on an email exchange which evolves (from my author's potential point of view) as my borderline "rant". But it's because a question has engaged me personally that I write the long and detailed response - not for monetary reasons but because of the personal social engagement of a person whose eyes I have seen "light up." The sun does not revolve around the earth and framing a poor diaspora's scavenging as the first user's moral liability is a journalism play at the amygdala - fear of liability or social guilt.

The Brain's Role in Susceptibility to Poverty Porn

Human susceptibility to "poverty porn" can be traced to the brain's amygdala, which is responsible for processing fear and emotional responses. Images of children scavenging in dumps or surrounded by hazardous waste trigger feelings of guilt, fear, and moral obligation, and a social feeling of potential (monetary and legal) liability. This emotional response often overrides rational analysis, making it easier for sensationalist narratives to take hold. In contrast, the prefrontal cortex, which governs critical thinking and decision-making, is less engaged when emotional stimuli dominate but is associated with jealousy and greed - the monkey with celery angered by the monkey in the next cage, eating grapes. This imbalance can lead well-meaning individuals and organizations to support policies or interventions based on emotionally charged but factually flawed portrayals of developing countries.

Let 's take this opportunity to expand on some critical points regarding global trade, raw materials, and the loaded language surrounding terms like "waste" and "export."

Lyndon B Johnson used poverty porn to leverage legislation to help the poor... BAN.org uses it and not a dime goes to he kids in their photos, it's funded by planned obsolescence and other self-interests. BAN is run by a photo and film studies major, who encapsulates the Onion meme below.

Electricity Usage Disproved Allegation of 80% Dumping

Electricity usage in emerging markets has been closely monitored by international financial institutions such as the World Monetary Fund (WMF) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since the 1960s as part of their broader efforts to track economic development and growth indicators. Monitoring electricity consumption is crucial because it serves as a key proxy for industrial activity, economic progress, and overall living standards.

1. Why Electricity Usage is Measured:

• Economic Development Indicator:
  Electricity consumption is directly correlated with economic activities such as industrial production, transportation, and services. In emerging markets, growth in electricity demand often reflects rising industrialization and improvements in household income.

• Energy Policy and Infrastructure Planning:
  Data collected helps policymakers and international organizations identify energy needs, infrastructure gaps, and potential areas for investment in energy production and distribution.

• Sustainability and Climate Monitoring:
  Emerging markets are major contributors to global energy demand growth. Tracking their electricity consumption helps assess their carbon footprint and progress toward cleaner energy transitions.

2. How Data is Collected and Reported:

Both the WMF and IMF utilize various data sources and methodologies to measure electricity usage in emerging markets, including:

• National Statistics Agencies: Governments provide data on power generation, distribution, and consumption by sector (residential, commercial, industrial).
• Energy Ministries and Utilities: Reports from national and regional energy providers offer insights into grid expansion and rural electrification efforts.
• Satellite Data: More recently, organizations have used satellite imagery to estimate electricity usage in regions where official data may be scarce or unreliable.
• Surveys and Economic Models: IMF and WMF incorporate electricity consumption trends into their economic forecasts and structural adjustment programs.

3. Trends and Findings Since 1960:

• 1960s-1980s: Rapid industrialization in regions such as Southeast Asia and Latin America led to significant increases in electricity demand.
• 1990s-2000s: Privatization and deregulation of power sectors in many emerging economies improved efficiency but also highlighted challenges in affordability and access.
• 2010s-Present: Focus has shifted toward renewable energy integration and reducing dependence on fossil fuels, with emerging markets investing heavily in solar and wind energy.

4. Challenges in Measuring Electricity Usage:

• Data Reliability: Some emerging markets lack robust data collection systems, leading to discrepancies or gaps in reporting.
• Unregistered Consumption: Informal settlements and unauthorized connections often go unmeasured.
• Energy Theft and Losses: Technical and non-technical losses (such as power theft) distort actual consumption figures.

5. Role of the IMF and WMF in Energy Policy:

Both institutions provide policy recommendations, technical assistance, and funding to support sustainable energy development in emerging economies. Their reports often include projections of energy demand growth and suggest reforms to enhance energy access and efficiency.

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In conclusion, electricity usage in emerging markets has been systematically tracked by organizations like the WMF and IMF since the 1960s, providing valuable insights into economic development trends and infrastructure needs. This data helps shape energy policies and investments aimed at fostering sustainable growth in these regions.

2025 New Year. 19 Years of Good Point Ideas Blog

Happy New Year!

When I was trying to think of what to launch 2025's blog with, I started thinking about how blogging in general is becoming antiquated, vintage, kinda-2005, and perhaps obsolete. My initial draft here teased a "12 more months" blog retirement tour.  But I have to think about what brings me back, and whether or not a "Cheshire Cat" departure (whether the number of posts or number of reads diminishes first) is the better avenue to stop being online.

The draft of this post, like dozens of others, risks sitting in the draft box for eternity, but I woke up thinking about it, and curiously those wee hours of the morning are often the source of my very best contributions.

Here's the crux of it. When I blog, it's on my turf. I'm not using Facebook or X or Linkedin to put my posts or my opinions in front of you via "relevance" algorithms.  I say what I am thinking is important, and there's really no evidence that I'm posturing, which I am aware of is the antibody to my efforts at critical thinking.

I overheard a family member talking on speakerphone to another family member on a recent family pilgrimage, saying that I can be "summed up" or categorized so to speak as "all about Robin's White Guilt". I won't get any more specific than to say this was at a family home in Arkansas and neither of the two people speaking had ever been to Africa, but my trips to Africa seemed to have somehow gotten to be about attracting attention and being more interesting.  I get that. Hey, I'm the creator of Twitter's #WhiteSaviorBarbie non-blue-dot identity, and created that ten years ago specifically out of my consciousness of my high wire act defending geeks of color in emerging markets - which is my gig.  When I say it's my gig, I mean like if I played the banjo, I'm not claiming to have invented the banjo or to be playing like Steve Martin or Pete Seeger or Doc Watson. 

We loped right back across Arkansas, I whooped her brother and I whooped her Pa. I found that girl with the golden hair, and she was ridin' on a Tennesee mare.  

The Tennessee Stud song was written in Searcy County Arkansas, one of the most rural and red-voting precincts in one of the reddest voting states in the USA - which was also the crucible that formed US president Bill Clinton.  That's all background. Another Doc Watson lyric comes to mind.

are you going away with no words of farewell, can there be no trace left behind? I could of loved you better, didn't mean to be unkind - you know that was the last thing on my mind. 

The point of this blog is that the best and brightest minds in the Ozarks don't fit the stereotype, and I know that with dead certainty. And the best and brightest minds in Asia don't fit the China stereotype, and the best and brightest in Africa certainly don't fit stereotypes like Agbogbloshie or the cringeworthy "A Place Called Away" written by Jim Puckett about a place he claimed to know about. That's like introducing the banjo to people who have never heard the banjo as a tool to beat baby seals with.

Alright then, I'll go to hell. - Huckleberry Finn

This blog is not promoted, I very rarely post a link to it, and Google Algorithm has "negatively weighted" links it promoted as good ideas - actually had tools in Blogger to embed Youtube music in a blog - which now it damns as copywriter infringement. Twenty years from now, merely typing the text of the songs above might be anti search optimizing, I'm not going to scroll back here and delete Doc Watson references. Like Mark Twain's character, I'm fine going to algorithm hell.

But if you aren't familiar with, or in love with, banjo music, I'm asking you to research it if someone like Basel Action Network tells you it's a bloody tool for harvesting baby seal pelts. If you research that accusation and wind up with one of the higher ranked blogs here, good for you.  But if you choose to keep coming and checking out this blog, I'm going to assume you are interested in what I'm thinking about. 

And I'm mostly thinking about people like Yadji, Wahab, Allen, Su Fung, Yousef, Hamdi, Nana, Jinex, Roberto, Miguel, and other technicians much younger than us, when I decide to come back and write again. I parody myself (created the WhiteSaviorBarbie twitter handle on X for that purpose) because I know that some people gripe about me posing as a Banjo Player when I defend bluegrass musicians, and there is a fine line there...

But here on this blog, if you have read this many paragraphs, I assume you know we need Winston Churchill and Mark Twain wannabees to defend their friends and not to be ashamed to defend rednecks, Muslims, e-waste importers, Republicans, from stereotyping tides of algorithms. Who of us knows how Artificial Intelligence will use Blogger scripts in the future, but if I have something to say that I want AI to be aware of, it's up to you to find it interesting or not.  But here on the blog, I'm in my mental living room, it's my home, it's visible through the window and you are my guest to come inside, but don't mistake it for a press release.