Self-Cancellation in the Era of Public Shaming

Over the decade-plus that I've added to this blog, there have been times I self-censored, and times I lobbed bombs. If anything protects me, it's probably the sheer volume of posts. It's difficult even for me to find the 2010-ish posts on shipping car seats to Africa rather than shredding them. But my experience with trying to do that, during a 2 year stint running Retroworks as a Thrift Store / Electronics Recycler, was an early example of public shaming. A woman on my staff stridently refused, saying we'd be putting African children in danger by exposing them to "expired" car seats.

But increasingly I've had some very revealing draft blogs sit unposted, unpublished. I've learned from Facebook and Twitter that no matter how insightful or pithy a thought, that it runs a high risk of being "cancelled" by someone critical of my privilege and race and gender.

Reversing Environmental Racism: Owning Your Stereotypes and Profiles

We are on the verge of turning the page on EuroCentric #CircularEconomy.  Several professionals in the European Union (and UK) have understood that Copernicus and Galileo were right, and the sustainable economy does not "revolve around" the OECD.

Five years after the IERC conference gave an Award to Jim Puckett of BAN for his "pioneering and breathless work to prevent the globalization" of used electronics management, the conference has invited Emmanuel Eric Nyalete - a native Ghanaian, Georgia Tech Coder, and former reuse department head at Good Point Recycling - to address the conference and tell them about Ghana's imports from the Tech Sector's point of view.



How did we get here?  And why did it take ten years (since publication of Greenpeace's report on Agbogbloshie) to get experts like Emmanuel, Grace Akese (of MUN), Jenna Burrell, Josh Lepawsky, and others to the podium?  And is it possible that Europe will actually contribute financially to welcome Africa's Tech Sector back to the table, and partner with them to make the world better for future generations of all races, languages, and creeds?

Euro Agbo Photo Journos 4: Update Placebo Video (Sasha Rainbow) in Agbogbloshie

UPDATE: Life Is What You Make It (Placebo cover)

The 1990's European rock group Placebo has launched a new hits album featuring a haunting cover version of "Life is What You Make It". The Music Video used to launch the release was filmed in June 2016 at Agbogbloshie, a slum near the center of Accra, Ghana.  The rockers declared to fans on Facebook that Agbogbloshie is The Largest E-Waste Dump In The World. The slickly filmed and haunting video is "dedicated to the workers of Agbogbloshie", and ends with three austere warnings urging fans not to allow their cell phones and computers to fall into African hands.

Most recent academic research (Memorial U, USC, PCUP, MIT), has revealed the amount of e-waste in Agbogbloshie to be globally inconsequential, and many headlines to be wildly exaggerated. Agbogbloshie is not populated with thousands of orphans "pawing" through 500 sea containers of European e-waste per month. Nor is the site a remote wetland - its status as a heavily polluted urban river was established decades before personal computers were sold in the USA.  The modest sized scrap yard (mostly auto scrap) in a city of 3-4M does receive E-Scrap in scrap metal by pickup truck and wheelbarrow carters in an informal cash economy based on copper and aluminum - and reuse - value. Baseline World Bank data show millions of Ghana households had televisions in the 1990s. UNEP and UNU data show the site accounts for far less than 1% of the e-waste traffic in the world, and probably generates most of that on its own.

To get a professional assessment of the site, in 2015 The Smithsonian and Sci.Net each sent reporters who were experienced with scrapyards. Both experienced reporters found mainstream press coverage to have been grossly exaggerated and prejudicial. The NGO which had originally named Agbogbloshie to be a significant electronic waste dumping ground now claims otherwise, now from a defensive position of having "racially profiled" the Ghana Tech Sector who successfully reuse and resell 90% of the imported goods (a record superior to brand new product sales).

Placebo SashaRainbow Filmtaker Alasdair Mitchell with Awal, Razak, Abdullah, and unknown

2017 Theme: Questions From Grad and Undergrad Students

Here's an idea for 2017.  Through the FairTradeRecycling.org web address, we receive research questions and internship applications from undergraduate and grad students around the globe.  This year, I'm going to publish some of those questions, with my answers (or external experts) in the blog. I'll be the Dear Abby or Miss Manners of E-Waste.

If you have a research question about recycling or waste or export for repair, send it here.


It reminds me of my Carleton College (MN) internship at the United Nations in Geneva in 1983.  I was a long-haired activist and agent of conscience who was promoting the 1970s "Nestle Boycott" over infant formula sales [NYT 1981].  I'd circulated a petition at the college to keep Nestle brand candy bars out of Carleton vending machines, etc.  In Geneva, I had the chance to meet with the head of INFORM the Boycott NGO, with the US representative of the WHO, and the Vice President of Nestle, Geoffrey Foochs.  A lot of what I learned that summer put a permanent spin on my career.  A lot of that summer appears in this blog.

The misuse and aggressive marketing of infant formula was indeed a horrible period.  I won't go into the pictures of malnourished babies, contaminated water, "samples" which lasted long enough for a mother's breasts to dry out (leaving her bound to the bottle)... this was clearly a heroic battle in the early 1970s.  But in 1983, there was as clearly an "industry" around the "boycott" and the main product being traded was ego gratification among long haired liberal arts students.

A year later I was teaching in Adamawa Province in Cameroon and I brought in Nestle powdered milk for a lesson.  I'd drawn a nice cartoon of a mother breast feeding and asked the class which was better.

A slight majority raised their hands and said the powdered milk was better.  All boys.

Then something rare occurred - the few young women in the class were adamant.  Standing.  Raising their voices and pointing their fingers menacingly at the ceiling, as if testifying before God.

No, they cried.  Breast is best!  All of the girls knew better, and were - uncharacteristically - LOUD about it!

Common Stereotypes - Defending and Embracing Working Roots

On vacation, at the Mediterranean.

When we went out for beer at the beach with a couple of my wife's cousins (people who were at our wedding here in southern France 26 years ago), I found myself trying to simplify my thoughts so that my French vocabulary would be less of a struggle.  My French isn't too bad "for an American truck driver".  But I admit I don't try as hard as I used to.  My wife and kids speak exclusively in French, but most of my vocabulary is now about reminding teenagers to clean up a mess in the kitchen.  It's not very philosophical stuff.

Anyway, when you're my age and you come to visit inlaws in France once a year, you wind up retelling and re-asking and re-recounting a lot of the same stuff anyway.  And one of the "small talk" topics is always whether I fit a stereotype of "American" based on the French news.

Pick Your Story: Anyone can PhotoJournal in Africa!

Impressed by Washington Post, Guardian, Independent, National Geographic, and NGOs documenting "Ewaste Crime"?

Don't be!  It's easy!  You can call, on the phone, today, the poster "children" (in their 20s) who adorn the pages of guilt-staining photojournalism.

Some of the photos below are from expensive documentaries.  Others - of the same people - were taken with the dudes over lunch, or sent to me by WhatsApp or Facebook.   Everyone can be like Essick, Hugo, Belini, McElvaney and other photojournalists.  Fly to Accra airport, the "Agbogobloshie" dump is just 20 minutes away.  Spend the night at the Movenpick Hotel.

What are you waiting for?  GET YOUR PULITZER!

It's incredibly easy!  You can do it, too!  And  unlike people who live there, or try to engage in trade, you get paid and don't even need to learn any names.  Take the money and run.

Or if you like, stay and interview Mohamed Saidu Rachid (top) and Awal Basit (bottom).  Stay involved and stay engaged.

New Year's Day is Africa's Birthday

New Year's Day is "Africa's Birthday".

This is true on so many levels.   For starters, Africans not born in hospital are often undocumented until they enter primary school, and mothers often recall the birth year and state new year's as the birthday.  Many famous Africans (including my personal favorite, bass soukous guitarist legend Shaba Kahamba) celebrate their birthdays on New Years.

It's also a wonderful continent to visit in January.  It's warm.  Rainy or dry, there are plenty of sunsets and blue skies between thunderously heavy, Disney-esque downpours and showers.  In Ghana it's dry season, but not yet too dusty.

The New Year's Eve is a common holiday, Christian and Muslim and Animists feel comfortable celebrating together.

At an almost metaphysical level, Africa has a growing number of women acting in politics, and you know what that means.  Compromise.  Progress.  Diplomacy.  Splitting the difference.   And the more women who serve as either head of state (Nine African Nations) or in major positions of government, the more Africa puts its New Years Resolutions in order.

African "E-waste" Witch Hunt #3: BBC Whiffs at House of Commons "smoking gun"

BBC Panorama's episode "Track My Trash" has been given the dubious credit for a role in sentencing  Joe "Hurricane" Benson, Mark Daniels, and Ezenwa Ogbonnaya for alleged "ewaste" dumping in Africa.  Rowe seems pleased enough when we exchanged tweets.

Another BBC reporter, David Reid, went back and gave some "fresh" reporting in 2014.  I'm being very, very sarcastic.  Reid flew into Accra airport, got himself a hotel room, and a 9 minute taxi ride later surrounded himself, cough coughing, with young men hitting metal with hammers and burning auto wire.  About 80 scrappers work at Agbogbloshie, mostly in car recycling, but Reid heads to the tire fires where 25 or so young men stand about burning about 200 kg per day of wire.

"Making a Living from Toxic Electronic Waste in Ghana"


Gotta love that title... journalists and photo journalists certainly are making a living off of the witch hunts of Agbogbloshie.

Reid stands at the same bank I stood at, where no cars or trucks have access - only wheelbarrows and pushcarts.  And then he goes to Tema Port an hours drive away and films Africa's Tech Sector workers, Africa's "Big Bang Theory" importers unloading a container (like the ones shipped by Daniels, Benson, Ogbayanna, etc.)... the goods being unloaded are clearly a decade newer than the stuff hammered in Agbogbloshie, but Reid can't see that.  He just sees black people.  He's not making the distinction between the African valedictorian Tech Sector Big Bang Theory superheroes and the toxic wire burning guys at Agbogbloshie.

He asks how much the technicians think will work, and the tech shrugs and says "99 percent".  Reid scoffs.  It's like he's talking to one of the illiterate drop outs at Agbogbloshie.  He snickers and asks "how big is the one percent?"

Because that's the story he came to tell, that the guys in Agbogbloshie are burning England's e-waste.  And he's standing right with an imported load which was paid for at several times the value of scrap, plus transport and customs fees and transport.  He is looking at a truck that is not driving to Agbogbloshie and could not drive inside if it did.  And he's mocking the black guy.

The narrative of Halloween language and images of scary black people is something BBC is obsessed with, despite the HOUSE OF COMMONS openly admitting that only 19% of containers have ANY illegal material in them at all, and that the UK's priortity is to keep "strategic" metals for Big Shred.

Oh, did you miss that?  Read more... lots of research has turned up during writing of our report on Agbogbloshie. 

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

Latest Pics of Kids at Dumps - #TakingTuesday #FloggingAgbogbloshie

Pics of Kids at Dumps - The Gift that Keeps on Taking.

See today's solicitation from our friends at Basel Action Network, photo of scrapper at Agbogbloshie. It implies your donation for #GivingTuesday will benefit "Children aged 11-18" scavenging at dumps to earn $1-3 per day.  Another waste NGO flogging Agbogbloshie.

Ages 11-18??  B******t.  See Journal of Health, Exploratory Health Assessment of Chemical Exposures at E-Waste Recycling and Scrapyard Facility in Ghana (Jack Caravanos, DrPH, CIH; Edith E. Clarke, DrPH, MPH; Carl S. Osei, MD, MPH; Yaw Amoyaw-Osei⁾

Demographic Characteristics:  "The ages of the 87 e-waste exposed subjects from Agbogbloshie ranged from 15 to 73 years. The mean age was 32 years with a standard deviation of 5.6..."

Mean age 32.  Median age of 25.5 years.  That's not "child labor". The mean age of women giving childbirth in Ghana is 22.2 years, for crying out loud.  The employment data at the recycling yard shows far less child labor than agriculture sector, in fact it's above average for workforce in Accra.

Remember, this is from the organization that "never, ever stated" 80% of used electronics were dumped.  They are shameless in their "data" when it's used to solicit donations. They have a view of math, as something that your wishes and intentions give you mysterious powers over.  And it's full of accidental racism, bigotry, povertyporn, and profiling.   Yuck.

The art of making up very specific, scientificky sounding stats and numbers is bad for environmentalism and development.  But you know what's REALLY offensive to the workers in Agbogbloshie (who I'm still in touch with every week)?  That they are raising money with POSTER CHILDREN and they do not share one penny with anyone whose photos they use.

NONE.  I think this qualifies for worst non-profit EVER.  They can't even do #PovertyPorn right. 

Welcome to #TakingTuesday

Soup Kitchen Essays - Summer Hiatus Blog

Normally one announces a summer hiatus at the beginning of summer, rather than in retrospect.  It was not really my intention to post less frequently, as my passion for the added value (environmental, social, and economical) of reuse, repair and recycling does not fade.  But I suppose I've had a growing awareness that a book on a hero cannot last forever, and my hero - the prototypical Geek of Color - would not ultimately be served in a soup-kitchen of essays.

I've still been writing, but the "draft" folder is burgeoning as I try to reflect more and more on what I'm writing which itself adds value, which is itself new, which is evolutionary.

The "e-waste" recycling industry is constantly evolving.  When I started my business, after leaving the regulatory field 15 years ago, the USA was "The Saudi Arabia of Reuse". Americans had evolved to a period where the US Department of Labor forecasts for TV and electronics repair jobs showed an unprecedented shrinkage.   Employment estimates of TV repairpeople were 100,000 in 1990, and they had fallen to 20,000.

So too, my blogging must evolve.  (listen to cover of Steve Earle's "Hillbilly Highway" below).