We covered a lot of ground (somewhat laboriously) during the past 4 weeks, basically making the case for two serious "environmental malpractice" cases. Do the poorest people in emerging markets have all the tools and safety protections they need to recycle bad CRTs? No. That is the point of Fair Trade Recycling. Use the value of the proven 85% good material to pay for the proper recycling - not just of the 15% accidental breakage and elective upgrade, but also the electronics being thrown out today in those nations. Fair Trade Recycling depends on the use of the reuse market to finance these improvements. But we must overcome an effective boycott on trade with poor people.
In the past few posts on Environmental Justice, I've shown current news stories (within the past 6 months) about technicians framed, outed, and defamed for their reuse and repair work in ICT industries. Here's a synopsis of the first two cases (already posted) and a teaser on Environmental Malpractice 7. This is not OLD NEWS. This defamation is in the headlines today.
- Egypt: The false statements by BAN (cited in EM5) give an excuse to a regime to seize computers more than 5 years after date of manufacture - including CRTs that last 25 years - as "e-waste". The timing of enforcement, 2007, meant there were virtually no CRTs with assembly line dates of 2003 to be found, and 100% of CRTs were seized by Egyptian customs during the next few years. This led to a 2011 Report on "E-Waste Disposal Problems" in Egypt, which is cited (temporally wrong) as support for BAN's original claim. But the report dealt exclusively with the "problem" of the pile of working CRTs seized by customs - a completely Ban-made problem. It culminates with three things: an end to sales by reputable USA suppliers, an arrest of USA suppliers willing to tape fake dates on the monitors, and the Egypt market finally accepting cheap new units made in China, the end of a decade when names like "IBM" and "HP" and "Dell" meant a quality, affordable, internet experience in Cairo. A November 2012 Headline on Egypt shows a massive pile of mixed TVs and monitor "ewaste" dumped on the ground. Egyptian Geeks are out of business. #Hamdy.
- Nigeria and Ghana: The false statements by BAN (cited in EM6), especially the "80%-90% of African = primitive" statistic completely made up off the top of someone's head, leads to a ban on exports by European WEEE standards. Africans try buying, as they did the previous decade, newish and tested CRTs. Greenpeace and the UK Independent sneak a sabotaged TV into Joseph Benson's container with a GPS, and track it. Benson is arrested and goods are seized. But a 2 year research by UNEP finds that 85% of the imports are working, and that a similar percentage of material at the Agbogbloshie and other dumps were trade ins and discards from African cities (which had TV since the 1980s). December 2012 Headline: Joseph Benson found guilty of exporting, implied to be a vindication of the 80% primitive African propaganda, and no mention of the UNEP 2011 studies discrediting the original accusation. West African Geeks are out of business. #Benson.
In the final section, Indonesia (Environmental Malpractice 7, currently editing), we have the absolutely worst example of Environmental Malpractice and Injustice. In the two cases above, rich corporations protected their new sales from "secondary markets" by funding an NGO who targets up and coming threats in emerging markets (which were growing in internet use at 10X the rate of the USA and Europe). This week's headline repeats the fake, false, discredited, unsupported, undocumented, predjudiced statistic - in Science Daily, a magazine likely to be cited as a source by future "e-waste" researchers.
BAN's silence is complicit in the high tech lynching of technicians in developing markets. I will show that decisively with photos of Jim Puckett in Indonesia, falsely describing people who had hundreds of thousands of dollars of goods seized, in Environmental Malpractice #7. #Chiu
In the past few posts on Environmental Justice, I've shown current news stories (within the past 6 months) about technicians framed, outed, and defamed for their reuse and repair work in ICT industries. Here's a synopsis of the first two cases (already posted) and a teaser on Environmental Malpractice 7. This is not OLD NEWS. This defamation is in the headlines today.
- Egypt: The false statements by BAN (cited in EM5) give an excuse to a regime to seize computers more than 5 years after date of manufacture - including CRTs that last 25 years - as "e-waste". The timing of enforcement, 2007, meant there were virtually no CRTs with assembly line dates of 2003 to be found, and 100% of CRTs were seized by Egyptian customs during the next few years. This led to a 2011 Report on "E-Waste Disposal Problems" in Egypt, which is cited (temporally wrong) as support for BAN's original claim. But the report dealt exclusively with the "problem" of the pile of working CRTs seized by customs - a completely Ban-made problem. It culminates with three things: an end to sales by reputable USA suppliers, an arrest of USA suppliers willing to tape fake dates on the monitors, and the Egypt market finally accepting cheap new units made in China, the end of a decade when names like "IBM" and "HP" and "Dell" meant a quality, affordable, internet experience in Cairo. A November 2012 Headline on Egypt shows a massive pile of mixed TVs and monitor "ewaste" dumped on the ground. Egyptian Geeks are out of business. #Hamdy.
- Nigeria and Ghana: The false statements by BAN (cited in EM6), especially the "80%-90% of African = primitive" statistic completely made up off the top of someone's head, leads to a ban on exports by European WEEE standards. Africans try buying, as they did the previous decade, newish and tested CRTs. Greenpeace and the UK Independent sneak a sabotaged TV into Joseph Benson's container with a GPS, and track it. Benson is arrested and goods are seized. But a 2 year research by UNEP finds that 85% of the imports are working, and that a similar percentage of material at the Agbogbloshie and other dumps were trade ins and discards from African cities (which had TV since the 1980s). December 2012 Headline: Joseph Benson found guilty of exporting, implied to be a vindication of the 80% primitive African propaganda, and no mention of the UNEP 2011 studies discrediting the original accusation. West African Geeks are out of business. #Benson.
In the final section, Indonesia (Environmental Malpractice 7, currently editing), we have the absolutely worst example of Environmental Malpractice and Injustice. In the two cases above, rich corporations protected their new sales from "secondary markets" by funding an NGO who targets up and coming threats in emerging markets (which were growing in internet use at 10X the rate of the USA and Europe). This week's headline repeats the fake, false, discredited, unsupported, undocumented, predjudiced statistic - in Science Daily, a magazine likely to be cited as a source by future "e-waste" researchers.
BAN's silence is complicit in the high tech lynching of technicians in developing markets. I will show that decisively with photos of Jim Puckett in Indonesia, falsely describing people who had hundreds of thousands of dollars of goods seized, in Environmental Malpractice #7. #Chiu
