Picking The Wrong #ewaste "Underdogs" Part I

Happy 4th of July (from France).  Everyone here is talking about "underdogs" - though without a solid French translation. Different translations convey different assumptions.  Opprime is "oppressed", perdants is "losers". Sous-estime is "underestimated" (which works after the unexpected victory, in hindsight).

When Iceland beat England in the Euro Cup, and Wales beat Belgium, it was a surprise.  When Leicester City - facing elimination from the Premier League a year earlier - won the entire British Isles championship, the French sportscaster seemed to be missing a handle for the story.

Could 2016 be the Year of the Underdog?   One long-running theme of this Good Point: Ethical E-Waste Blog is our critical look at how #photojournalism can create, leverage, or ignore underdogs.  The audience of mankind is highly evolved to nurture the young and oppressed (what I call the Steve Pinker "nurture" instinct), which causes us to support scrappy underdogs vs. big corporations. Mass media is not an umpire - it's a player in the game.  Media controls who's perceived as worthy of nurture, and who's perceived as "imperialist" or "bully".  We nurture the oppressed, we root for the underdogs.  And when it's an obscure, technical, or foreign story, we depend on the media to tell us who the bullys and who the underdogs are.

Here's a kind of derivative take.  Mass media can create a "loser" who "wins" the underdog blessing. Being an underdog is a blessing of "moral currency". We see this in everyday society, people exaggerating their "rags to riches" history, the tourists' propensity to validate their "close encounter" with poverty.  And I need of course little excuse to repost the greatest comedic clip of all time, BBC's "The Four Yorkshiremen" sketch (pre-Monty Python's "Finally 1948" show).



So on July 4, Superpower USA reflects back on the scrappy 1776 Minutemen who overcame the King of England, the United Kingdom's rule.  Like Luke Skywalker and Hans Solo and Princess Leiah, a handful of colonies "against all odds" threw off the yoke of the 1700's greatest superpower, Great Britain.  Iceland, Bernie Sanders, Wales, Leicester City, and George Washington, the lovable underdogs.

The underdog card...

Another Study Reveals Africa's Tech Sector knows its STUFF (#ewastehoax)

The new 2016 Report, published by United Nations University, is 39 pages.  What is remarkable about it is not only that it arrives at almost exactly the same "ewaste" percentages as documented by academics (like Josh Lepawsky of Memorial University, who was savagely mud-slung by a certain NGO director in Seattle last month).  The #ewastehoax around places like Agbogbloshie has been roundly covered by several academics, Basel Secreteriat (the ACTUAL international organization, not the USA charity using its name), and data journalists.

Again, disclaimer - poverty in Africa isn't fake. Toxics in Africa aren't fake.  What was faked was the narrative that EU and USA recycling programs dump waste and are responsible for the poverty or toxics.

What's remarkable about the UNU study is two things.  First, it uses completely different data sets from MIT, Memorial U, US ITC, and data journalism by #ewasterepublic Jacopo Ottaviana, etc... but arrives at the same conclusions.  For example, the chart below shows that less than 1% of Europe's used electronics are exported intact .

Very, very little of Europe's e-waste gets exported intact.  In fact, I interpret the data to say that Europe is being waaay too conservative - the percentages of working and non-obsolete goods is way higher than what is being sent overseas.

And very, very little of the junk in Africa's junkyards (like Agbogbloshie) came directly.  More than 95% of Africa's "ewaste" is its own, devices imported decades ago, used productively for years.

Some individual countries, they say, have higher or lower incidents of transboundary movement which is junk... but that begs the question... if it's an individual country like Burkina Faso, they are getting used electronics from wealthy cities like Accra.  As Lepawsky and Mather already documented, there are used goods traded WITHIN the global "south".

These screenshots shows exactly what I've been telling UNU and StEP since New Orleans in 2006.  The "Stuff" in the "Story of Stuff" gets used for YEARS and is EVENTUALLY discarded and recycled.   What's the first intact piece we photographed in Agbogbloshie?  It was a scrapper's VCR device that Adam Minter and Isaaco Chiaf and Jacopo Ottaviana (#ewasterepublic) stooped to photograph.  Africans imported millions and millions of used VHS players - IN THE 1980s and 1990s!  In Joe Benson's itemized packing lists, there isn't a single VHS player.  BECAUSE AFRICANS NOW WATCH DVD and STREAMING and soon, digital TV broadcasts.  The latter will generate exactly what it did in the USA - waste analog CRTs.  But those aren't being imported anymore to places like TEMA which have already switched to digital.

Golly gee, Colonialists, the evidence is that Africa's Tech Sector knows it's STUFF.

What Joseph Benson said on camera was the truth.  What Mike Anane said on camera was a lie.  Africa's Tech Sector needs reparations.

BREAKING: Lord Chris Smith's African Witch Hunt Continues: Part 1

UNEP doubled down, using photos of "primitive recycling" in its 2015 report on "e-waste".  But the actual statistics hidden throughout UNEP's own report told a different story from it's press release headline.  If the majority of sea containers of used electronics shipped from Europe are "illegal", then why do the seizures of hundreds of containers only find 1/3 which had anything illegal?

Just one of dozens of examples where the #ewastehoax needs to answer the simple question, "duh?"

UNEP is only pointing fingers, however.  One nation abandoned nuance with flair 5 years ago.  Indictments and prison sentences. While Agbo workers burn wire, England is burning witches.

The photo above shows Mike Anane of Ghana briefing reporter Raphael Rowe of BBC Panorama, on the ground in Agbogbloshie, Ghana.   Mr. Anane was back at Agbogbloshie 2 days before my arrival in March... briefing Jacopo Ottaviana of Aljazeera's #ewasterepublic... see below.

"When I look at these things, I would not call it importation. For me the bottom line is dumping, because from all of these containers that come, only about 20% are functional, and 80% are junk, garbage" - Mike Anane Aug 2014

http://tegenlicht.vpro.nl/biografieen/a/mike-anane.html

PRISON FOR DANIELS RECYCLING? 

Anane's accounts to journalists were covered on this blog a few days ago.  I met him face to face at an Interopol Meeting in Washington DC in 2010, where he presented between UK Environmental Agency Director Lord Chris Smith and Jim Puckett of BAN.  You know the claims... 80% dumping. 500 sea containers per month arriving at Agbogbloshie. The biggest E-Waste Dump in the World. Teeming with fish, Anane recounted, just 10 years earlier.

Mike Anane: "For the past 11 years. That was when I first saw the trucks with e-waste coming from the port to Agbogbloshie. Agbogbloshie happens to be a place I’m familiar with. I have been hanging around the area when it was a lush, green, beautiful wetland with lots of birds and some wildlife, and the river and the lagoon that run through the dump site had so much fish. The fishermen, the people in the communities depended on these rivers for their livelihood. Agbogbloshie used to be an amazing, beautiful wetland, a Garden of Eden. A wetland performs enormous environmental functions. When the water from the city goes to the sea, it goes through the wetland and gets filtered. Fish from the sea come and make babies. Wetlands are so important to every country, to nature, and to mankind.

"But now, the river and the lagoon are both dead: no fish, no organisms, nothing. The river and the lagoon both end up in the sea, and when the fishermen at the seaside throw their net, hoping to catch some fish, they get computers, television sets, and fridges. Their poisons spill into the sea every single day... So for me Agbogbloshie, which was a green Garden of Eden, is now paradise lost."

Note that this interview was in August 2014, describing "11 years" of experience.  But his 2010 interview with me at Interpol, he said it had been ten years.  And in his first interview, with Greenpeace in 2008, it was ten years.  And on PBS Frontline, it was since he was a boy.

My personal interview was during the meeting that set Lord Chris Smith up against Hurricane Benson. Lord Chris Smith, as I recall, introduced Jim Puckett and Mike Anane to the audience of Interpol enforcement experts.  It set up the first arrest and indictment of "Hurricane Joe Benson". And this week, LetsRecycle.com, a British environmental online newsletter, reports that "Hurricane Joe Benson" has company.

MORE AFRICAN TECHS FOR UK JAILS

History of Agbogbloshie: African Tech Comments on Ewastehoax

Just republishing Emmanuel E.P. Nyalete's comment to Resource Recycling this weekend.  Superbly thoughtful and interesting.   He's a laptop repair guru and graduate student studying coding at Georgia Tech... and a former Good Point Recycling staffer and current WR3 associate.

History of Agbogbloshie

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I remember Agbogbloshie as one of the usual places in Accra where the guys from the northern part of the country work. They come knocking from door to door to buy alluminum and bottles and any other scrap item they could get. I remember saving coca-cola bottles that I sold to them to make some extra money for my next football. Over the years, Agbogbloshie has becomes a very compalext informal recycling site. It has grown from the recycling of bottles, glass and alluminun to heavy metalls from tractors and any form of motor vehicle. One of my friends who worked there told me that they prefer motor vehicles because they contained the larger quantity of metals and electrical wires. As Ghana's consumption of electronics grew so has the informal recycling of househould equipments grew. 

For over two decades, I have never considered this site to be the largest e-waste dump site in the world until I read the artiles and saw the videos in the mainstream media in Europe and the USA. I was surprised for a few reasons:

1. There are very few electronic items in Agbogbloshie to even consider it as Ghana's locally generated e-waste dump site.

2. The surface area of Agbogbloshie cannot contain the "world's e-waaste" considering the many junk auto parts that are already at the site.

3. The young men who work there use very simple tools and most of the time push carts to haul scrap. From my experience working in a recycling plant, there is no way these young men could haul "millions of tons" of e-waste and process them using hammers and chissels.

However, I acknowledge the fact that there is a problem, but its not about young men taking things apart with primitive tools. Neither is it an import issue. Ghana imports almost everything we use. The problem however is fire-burning wires for the valualble coper. 

To find the right solutions for this problem we need the correct diagnosis. We cannot find the right solutions if we keep exagerating the figures and the conditions on the ground. It does not help my country in any way if wrong statistics are published. A few projects have already failed at Agbogbloshie because they based their projects on false data. Incriminating African business men and women for crimes they have not commited will only lead to poverty and hence an increase in the fire pits at Agbogbloshie. Our country depends on these business men and women to provide technology at affordable prices to students and small businesses and hard working families. I am an example of how used electronics help families and young minds to aspire and dream for better tomorrow. 

Lets put in a liitle more effort to find the facts and then we will discover that there are so many talented technicians and inverntors in Africa who work hard and all they need is true partnership and opportunity. Thank you.

Emmanuel Nyalete

My own comment follows below

#Ewastegate: Photographer Moral License to call me"boy'

In the morning after my 2nd trip to Agbogbloshie, I was copying a video (the reaction of the scrap youth to the laptop photos, during the filming by the American photojournalist), and while waiting for the files to open, searched "Agbogbloshie" in twitter search.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2015/04/15/the-children-who-make-a-living-in-the-toxic-world-of-discarded-electronics/

"One of the many boys, between 12 and 18 years old, working in the Agbobloshie landfill." (Valentino Bellini)

I was stunned.   This was Rachid, the young man who was sitting immediately to the right of Wahab Odoi the afternoon before,in a video I had copied to youtube that night.  In today's Washington Post.

7 Steps To Create a Profitable Hoax (#ewastegate)

No one denies that the volume of unwanted electronic scrap is growing.   Gadgets improve lives around the world.   They don't work forever.  But they often have more than one life.

Display devices (more than half of all the e-Scrap) are like used automobiles.  The average life of an automobile (15k miles per year, 200k miles per car) is about 13 years... some last longer, some shorter.   But the average first ownership of cars is less than 50 months, or about 4 years.    

Some people (with means) like to buy new cars every 3-5 years. Same goes for television and video displays.   Just as the cars roll around for twice the number of years they were used by the first owner, there's a secondary market for TVs, PCs, and their display devices.   

How can a do-gooder create a $3M non-profit out of the used appliance (or used car) market? Two parts White Guilt, one part Exotic Locale Photos, one Fake Statistic.  Print millions, move on. 

For more, visit 2010 "Top Ten Myths of #ewastegate"



1.  Create a fake 'e-waste' news crisis  

Tell all the environmentalists that you have a "dirty little secret"... that most of the electronic material they have brought in to recycling centers didn't really get recycled in the USA, or at all.   CBS 60 Minutes, PBS Frontline, NPR, USA Today, BusinessWeek, BBC will come running to you with the microphone.  You are marketing a believable message to people who are already "activated" on the topic (already making the effort to bring old gear for recycling).

This is key, you aren't trying to convince people to care, you are taking people who already care and convincing them of a scandal.   For example:

Top Ten Myths about so-called "E-Waste" (Update)

by Robin Ingenthron- (Originally Published on Earth Day 2010 via Greenwala).  Updated May 2014, as a reminder that the "Great E-Waste Hoax" continues to accuse geeks of color in many countries.

'It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain

Ranking the 10 Myths requires a definition of what the term "e-waste" means.   In the dictionary and in the courts, "waste" means the material that is discarded or disposed of… stuff that didn’t get recycled, but was dumped.  If two computers are exported, and one is repaired, and the other is thrown away, only the second one is "ewaste".

Definitions aside, the "E-Waste" scare was probably the biggest environmental hoax of the past decade.  Protectionists, alarmists, and gray market regulators bandied the term loosely.  Two Chinese officials told me that any property once owned by anyone is considered "discarded" if it changes possession... the entire used car economy is "waste" business by that definition.   I asked a Hong Kong regulator at an Interpol conference - what if I used a laptop for a week and then sold it to my friend?  "Definitely e-waste" was his response.  

So I always put the term "e-waste" in quotes. Many myths stem from the confusion between waste, reuse, and scrap commodities (like steel and plastic).  Many Myths also have a kernel of truth.  But too often there is no data to support them.  There may be a photo of a poor child, and a fictitious statistic, or a stereotype.  

Some of Myths amount to "green" propaganda produced to sell "cures" like shredding.

As economist Roger Brinner said, “The sum of anecdotes is not data.”   Myths feed cynicism, which generates reaction AGAINST recycling (see #1).   We need scientists and engineers, economists and lawyers,  more representatives from importing businesses, and fewer megaphones.

 10.  MYTH:  "There is a growing tsunami of ewaste."

The Pitch: "Electronics are more disposable, with shorter useful lives. There is evidence [Franklin Associates] that obsolete electronics are the fastest growing segment of the MSW stream. Changes in analog TV broadcasts make old "rabbit ears" TVs obsolete, unless they are connected to cable or satellite. The pile is just getting bigger and bigger."

These facts are true, but they do not describe production of electronics. 

Generation is faster.  But the units themselves are getting smaller. There is more computing power in a cell phone today than in a living-room-sized computer at NASA in the 1970s. The increasing tonnage is made up of "legacy" equipment.   Most of the products collected at "ewaste recycling" events (think projection and CRT televisions) is coming out after decades of storage.