Fishing for Swordfish at E-Waste World: The Negro Leagues of Electronics Recycling

The Curse of the Bambino and the Basel Convention

The Blessing of Big Papi: Why Basel Needs Jackie Robinson

What Jim Puckett Can Learn from the Red Sox
(Three alternate titles)

The 2026 E-Waste World Conference in Frankfurt, Germany, had free attendance. That was a major draw for members of the World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association (WR3A), which had at least 4 attendees.  Of course, we originally had 3 attendees coming to rival E-Waste conference ICM in Valencia, Spain in January 2026.  I even bought my plane ticket to that much older conference, because it had initially accepted my proposal - Let Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network debate live on stage with two African Tech Sector geeks.

In this sports analogy blog, as we discuss Major League Baseball's integration of the "Negro League", and WSJ points out 25% of the USA FIFA Soccer Team are immigrants, we take a look at when the old oveweight player has to give up his seat on the team bench. Jim Puckett's opening statement, in his curious role as "Expert on E-Waste in Africa", was to state on the record that "First and foremost, Africa is the same as it was 20 years ago. Nothing has changed."

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ICM initially invited Jim to speak alongside just one of those Geeks, Nana Yaw Konodu, a German who came from Ghana about 40 years ago, but who 5 years ago opened a remanufacturing factory in Accra, Ghana. (We introduced him to Recycling International editors at the E-Waste World Conference in 2025, and he made their list of Top 100 important recyclers that year).

Why is Jim's opening statement so ... weird?  Twenty years ago, he and I were quoted in Charles Schmidt's NIH article on Africa's importation of used electronics, and I was already wrong (way behind) then - and was farther ahead than Jim was. Here's the thing: For the Basel Convention to remain in force, OECD has to be kept in a separate league from Non-OECD.  About 35% of the World's industrial economies have to be kept separate from the other 65%.  It's about protecting the job of the overweight aging baseball or football player, already sitting on the bench. if Jackie Robinson, Bob Gibson, Willie Mays, and Lou Brock are allowed to play.

Mysteriously, Nana Yaw was "de-invited" to ICM conference at the last possible minute (I have preserved emails). He and I canceled our trips rather than pay a thousand plus Euros to sit in the audience and listen to "Expert" Jim Puckett tell us about Africa.  And with a little maneuvering, E-Waste World Conference in Frankfurt made hay out of that, jumping on the invitation to invite Jim Puckett, Nana Yaw Konadu and Emmanuel Nyaletey (BridgeSolarPower.com, who helped WR3A with the 2015 tours of Agbogbloshie and the 2015 Clean Hands Teaser - Hurricane Benson interview minidocumentary).

(I'll pass on what the "maneuvering" involved.. a little bit of my Obi-Wan Kenobi stepping off the panel helped, as did E-Waste World splurging multiple platforms to Senor Puckett).

This morning's Wall Street Journal Opinion Page (my comment spun into this post) is titled "America's Immigrant Soccer Team", and centers on how much of its success owes to 25% of the roster being "birthright" citizens.

The comment section I waded into divides MAGA Trump Support commenters from Free Market business owners (who benefit from talent in any labor situation). And as my comment calls it, the line is over what should be "legal" immigration.  Calling balls and strikes, where is that line? And how does it compare to these lines we've drawn in the past?

Immigration and talent in sports.

Baseball integration and the Negro Leagues.

OECD/non-OECD segregation in the Basel Convention debate.

First, here's my WSJ comment on the sports immigration question.

1 hour ago

It would have been interesting to have polled opinions of Major League Baseball benches before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. But a lot of middle skilled white baseball players would soon find a lot of competition for their job. Robinson and Bob Gibson and Willie Mays were not immigrants of course. It's all about addition versus subtraction. Preaching subtraction appeals to the fattest oldest guys on the bench, always good way to get 35% of the vote (my best guess of the MLB poll poll). As all the true Red Sox fans know, it wasn't the curse of the Bambino - it was thee curse of Red Sox managers passing on Robinson, Gibson and Mays (last MLB team to integrate). Or on the bright side, The Blessing of Big Poppy. The point of the editorial isn't Legal vs Illegal but where to draw that legal line (birthright?) on immigration, and MAGAs appeal to the Substraction voters lines up with DJT Bambino-logic ... An obsession with denial of losing rather than the path to winning.

Jim Puckett's career depends upon his thesis that nothing has changed in 20 years, and his statements 20 years ago that nothing THEN had changed since the Basel Convention was drafted... Just like the player Jackie Robinson replaced depended upon MLB segregation. Winning the World Series was not about bringing the "subtracted" Bambino back again. It depended on the ADDITION of Big Papi, Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez... 

The Basel Convention draft, in the 1980s (passed and ratified in the 1990s, needed a way to segregate trade of industrial waste to keep it from being dumped on non-industrialized countries. The "legal line" they drew was membership in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development or OECD.

The Basel Convention negotiators of the 1980s needed a bright legal line. OECD membership became that line. At the time, it was a rough proxy for industrial capacity and environmental regulation. It wasn't perfect, but it served a purpose.

The problem is that legal lines can outlive the realities they were created to address.

When Jim Puckett says that Africa is the same as it was twenty years ago, he isn't merely making a factual claim. He is defending a framework that depends on Africa remaining the same. If Ghana's technicians, refurbishers, solar engineers, remanufacturers, and entrepreneurs are acknowledged as peers rather than victims, then the old assumptions behind much of the e-waste narrative begin to unravel.

Puckett still uses this old photo, of a young African with a black and white TV casing full of automobile wire (NOT e-waste) that resembles the 1977 album cover TV of Prince Nico Mbarga (Sweet Mother hit). Today's debate centers  a lot less on Jim Puckett and Prince Nico Mbarga, or needs to.

That is why Nana Yaw Konadu matters. That is why Emmanuel Nyaletey matters. They are not symbols. They are evidence.

The debate is not whether there should be rules. Baseball has rules. Immigration has rules. International trade has rules. The real question is where the line should be drawn, and whether yesterday's line still reflects today's reality.

Major League Baseball eventually stopped pretending that talent ended at the color barrier. American soccer benefits from players whose families came from somewhere else. Markets, industries, and societies grow when they recognize ability rather than defend incumbency.

The irony is that the people whom BAN still describes as recipients of charity are increasingly the people building factories, repairing equipment, manufacturing solar systems, and creating jobs. The "geeks of color" are no longer waiting for a seat at the table. They are already sitting there.

What happened in Frankfurt was not important because Jim Puckett and WR3A finally shared a stage. It was important because, despite every effort to keep them off the program, African technicians and entrepreneurs were able to speak for themselves.  And at least one invited white man invited initially as an Expert Speaker on Africa negotiated to give up his seat for the sake of #OwnVoices.

And once people hear them directly, it becomes much harder to argue that nothing has changed. And the claim that nothing has changed is inversely proportionate to expertise.