Showing posts with label #whitesaviorcomplex. Show all posts

A Short, Short 3 Minute explanation of Ghana's Agbogbloshie Scrapyard

Intern Nanja Horning and Liotolio Gahd whipped up this brief and entertaining short video to explain to people what Agbogbloshie is, and isn't, about.

Dinky funky funny rap on whitesaviorcomplex and the geeksofcolor who pay the price for sensationalism.

African "E-waste" Witch Hunt Continues: Part 2

I have the account of Mark Daniels. I have the account of Joe Benson. I'm looking for Ezenwa Ogbonnaya and M2 Ventures Limited ... That will make 3 UK electronics recycling companies who were tried in the press.

Daniels Recycling prosecuted for African WEEE export

In Part 1, as well as the "Sodom and Gomorrah" blog, we traced the outrage and arrests back to two men, Jim Puckett and Mike Anane.

That Agbogbloshie was a very large e-waste dump... perhaps "biggest in the world"
That the Odaw River was a pristine, green African "Eden" just a decade ago, "teeming with fish"
That the lead in the soil at the dump does not come from automobiles, but from dumped electronics
That 80% of the electronics shipped to Ghana are "junk" and the other 20% "fail after between 2 and 6 months"
That most of the work done at Agbogbloshie is by children, orphans, under age 18
That the majority of workers at AGbogbloshie die of cancer in 2 years.

Well, well, well... this is the information that was recited by Anane and Puckett at an Interpol meeting I attended at EPA offices in Arlington VA in March 2010. Puckett and Anane were introduced by the UK's Environmental Agency head, Lord Chris Smith.

These horrible "e-waste facts" were also recited to Raphael Rowe of BBC in "Panorama".

If half of the "e-waste facts" were half true, it would indeed be understandable that the Environmental Agency prosecuted Joe Benson, Mark Daniels, and Ezenwa Ogbonnaya for dumping - or rather selling - used electronics to Africa's Tech Sector.

But the accusers, the prosecutors, never met anyone in Africa's Tech Sector, did they?

Role of Celebrities and Poster Kids in NGO Fund Raising

While researching the term "poster child" for Fair Trade Recycling's report on Ghana (agonizingly close to completion... footnotes, footnotes!) I ran across some interesting articles on the March of Dimes - the anti polio campaign of the 1940s and 50s.

Wikipedia's article on the March of Dimes had a series of photos on the role of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the founding of a "National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (1938)". The campaign's use of photos of children in wheelchairs was effectively a merger of photojournalism and a public health campaign. In the beginning, American children were asked to each donate a ten cents, and the "March of Dimes" campaign was so successful (if not in raising money from children, for leveraging federal and charitable donations) that it became a model for the charity or non-profit sector.

Bringing poignant images to stir emotional, nurturing responses from donors earned a label of "poster child campaign". The term didn't really have any negative connotation until the 1960s. As I recall from my MBA courses in non-profit management at Boston University (but don't have time to track down), it was a study on "diminishing returns" of a Unicef campaign that resulted in treating photo fundraising more cautiously. We were taught, as MBA students, that there's a moral dilemma in using photos to raise funds for one non-profit cause if the campaign taxes the empathy of donors.

Celebrities and sad-eyed-children-photography make a powerful weapon. But it isn't science. And the worst kind of collateral damage is being waged via environmental malpractice. Today's blog is about how I don't become cynical, even in the face of rigged bids and shaming attacks on my character. My heroes stay fresher longer.

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).

The result of multiple studies by US Trade Commission, Secretariat of the Basel Convention, Memorial University, MIT, etc. is damning.

Second Hand electronics, imported to Africa, are not a "digital dump" or "reuse excuse" or "sham recycling". African Techs know more about what works in Africa than the NGOs do.

"E-Waste" filmed by photojournalists like Kevin McElvaney and BitRot did originate in Europe and the USA, but those filmed were imported by Africa's Tech Sector 20 years ago. The device being scrapped by a metal worker in a slum has lived a long and healthy second life, bringing affordable internet and teledensity to the continent for two decades. Interpol's "Project Eden" is about 6,000 years too late.

An NGO took the pics of kids at dumps and said "We must arrest the exporters".

The exporters, according to Interpol, are mostly Africans like Joe Benson.

And stupidly, Lord Chris Smith listened to fictious, made up statistics of 80% dumping, repeated by the photojournalists, a statistic with no economic reason to it and now without a source. No source. None at all.

Because the NGO source of the dumping data claims never to have said it.

"If you think I buy equipment, put in a boat and follow all the way to Africa, pay customs duties and truck it for landfill – if you find that, put put me in prisoin for 100 years. I will stay here in prison 100 years." - Joe "Hurricane" Benson (BJ Electronics)

Since there's no source for the Story of Stuff, it is time to listen to Africans, like Grace Akese, Emmanuel Eric Nyalete, Wahab Muhammed Odoi, and others in Africa's Tech Sector who explain how the old VCR being hammered for metal at Agbogbloshie was imported in the early 1990s. Most TVs sold in Africa in the 80s and 90s relied on VCRs for programming. Now there is satellite, there are 21 Ghana TV stations broadcasting, and streaming internet video carries the programming. So the VCRs are being junked.

Just like here. I've got 2 working ones here in my house that I haven't used for 5 years.

Agenda Shift 2: Agbogbloshie Ghana explained in 11 Minutes / McElvaney Akese Osseo-Asare

This 11 minute video of the exchange between 3 experts in e-waste of Agbogbloshie seems to get into the weeds at some points, but has everything you really need to know on the subject. Wait for the end, when Ph.D student Grace Akese of Memorial University responds to the German photographer Kevin McElvaney's description of the "mysterious" free market fraud which (he alleges) dumps hundreds of thousands of tons (or millions, perhaps) of obsolete non-working electronic waste on the poor of Africa.

DK Osseo-Asare (an American who has lived in Ghana for 11 years) responds to McElvaney first, explaining that his allegation they goods don't work and aren't repaired is a bit ignorant. The used products are more likely to work than brand new product sold in Africa.

Then Grace Akese of Kumasi, Ghana, who has researched the flow of goods throughout their 20 year lifecycle, has a chance to answer the question. Her command of every study and fact about "e-waste" export to Ghana emerges patiently and slowly. Then she schools McElvaney in a "drop-the-mic" conclusion.

91 percent of the used electronics Africa imports are reused for years. Asset tags add value in Africa's secondary market. An African consumer would no more scrape one off than you'd remove Jennifer Lopez's nametag from a shirt at the thrift shop, or scrape off a brand logo.

"Urban waste pollution in the Korle Lagoon, Accra, Ghana" ("Urban Waste") is an article that appeared in The Environmentalist in November, 2002. It was written by Markku Kuitunen and Kwasi Owusu Boadi at the University of Finland, following announcement of a major grant (mostly OPEC) to dredge the river and abate annual flooding.

BANG BANG. E-Waste Hoax is Dead. (note that CAER has removed all the Agbogbloshie Boy photos from the website, and is now a "national security" focus for RERA... E-Wastegate Agenda Shift)

Anyone writing any report on E-Waste Crime in Agbogbloshie is incompetent if they don't do background research. I don't have time to cite every one of these, but this one has a great bibliography, and is really a "smoking gun" for the Agbogbloshie "E-Waste Hoax", as well as a sobering account of past grants and efforts to "save Accra" from urban pollution.

The pollution and flooding is described as a problem since the early 1970s and 80s, and is attributed to "rapid urbanization" of Accra, Ghana's capital city.

"The Korle Lagoon in Accra, Ghana, has become one of the most polluted water bodies on earth. It is the principal outlet through which all major drainage channels in the city empty their wastes into the sea. Large amounts of untreated industrial waste emptied into surface drains has led to severe pollution in the lagoon and disrupted its natural ecology. The increased levels of industrial activity and consumption by the urban population lead to the generation of copious quantities of waste. Managing the volume of wastes poses a major challenge for the city authorities, particularly, ensuring that all the waste generated is collected for disposal. In Accra, the Waste Management Department is currently capable of collecting only 60 percent of the waste generated daily. The rest is dumped in open spaces, in surface drains, and into water bodies which end up in the Korle Lagoon. High eutrophication levels have developed in the shallow water body. The net effect is that, at the slightest downpour, the lagoon overflows its banks causing regular flooding in parts of the city.

"The Government of Ghana, having realized the adverse impacts of pollution in the lagoon on the physical and economic environment of Accra, with the support of donor agencies, is implementing measures to restore the lagoon to its natural ecology. Attempts are also being made to get the communities in the catchment area to become involved in managing their environment through environmental education and awareness programes."[sic]

The article stresses that problems cited in two previous studies (Biney, 1982 and Mensah, 1976) had continued to increase, and that by the time of the 1976 and 1982 studies, the lagoon was dead. As Accra (and Lagos, Douala, Nairobi, Kinshasa, etc.) has grown, so has pollution from the waste generated by people who live there.

Before the onset of this severe pollution, and in the early 1950s, the lagoon supported a thriving fishery of both fin and shellfish, which served as a source of employment and income for some people in the nearby shantytown, which incidentally derives its name from the lagoon. However, due to the grossly polluted state of the waters, the lagoon has lost its fishery (Biney and Amuzu, 1995), and it is hard to believe that this black, nauseating muddy water could ever have supported any such life. The Korle Lagoon is the major basin into which the greater proportion of the flood waters of Accra flow before entering the sea (Biney and Amuzu, 1995). The lagoon receives water from a total catchment area of 400 km2.

It receives discharges from three main sources—the Odaw River and two major drains on its eastern and western sections (Fig. 3). These major drains are mostly uncovered and usually collect silt and debris which are transported into the lagoon (Mensah, 1976). Waste discharges, including industrial effluent, are the major sources of pollution. The wastes originate from residential, commercial and recreational areas, offices and institutions, such as hospitals and schools. They include food waste as well as paper, batteries, glass, plastics, textiles, excreta aerosol cans, and much more (Biney, 1982; Mensah, 1976).

So Mike Anane's descriptions of the "E-Waste Tragedy" starting with bad e-waste exports in Europe is late to the game. Here are descriptions of the dumps upstream of the river, citing reports from Amuzu 1976, Laing 1994, etc.

"The water in the upper part of the lagoon is muddy, and the stench emanating from it is unbearable. An abundance of saw mill dust from the timber market industrial area is disposed into this part of the lagoon. Also, the Waste Department's dump which is covered with industrial sawdust, is gradually encroaching into the water body. Sediments in this part of the lagoon trap effluents from upstream. These include industrial, domestic, and hospital wastes which have further deteriorated the water quality upstream. According to Liang (1994; 141), a survey of manufacturing industries in the Greater Accra Region showed that the metal industry creates 16 percent of the total industrial waste, garment and textiles - 30 percent, chemicals and cosmetics - 20%, electricals and electronics at 1 percent and mineral products at 0.7 percent. Most of the untreated industrial waste waters are discharged into surface drains which flow into the Odaw River and Korle Lagoon. Since the upstream part of the lagoon is the usual point of discharge, and the receptor of wastes, it is the most affected."

So we knew in the 70s, 80s, and 90s that the lagoon was already polluted and dead, and that the source of the pollution was upstream of Agbogbloshie. And the 2002 study estimates the contribution of electric and electronics as contributing 1%. I'm not saying that Accra isn't polluted, and I'm not saying that pollution isn't tragic. But accusing African Techs, Geeks and Nerds, or Dagbani scrappers, of making this mess amounts to not much less than criminal defamation.

Sample clip, 1994 Accra Waste

So certainly ownership of second hand electronics increased in Ghana homes, certainly teledensity increased, as did pollution, sewage, and people throwing batteries and car stuff in the gutters and river. But arresting internet cafe owners, TV resellers, cell phone repairers, etc. seems like the most hideous, disgusting, moronic solution to the problem that anyone but a planned obsolescence industry could come up with.

And the Urban Waste Pollution articles bibliography, on page 309, involves numerous water studies of the Odaw River and Ghana pollution. Not a single one of these, however, is cited in Greenpeace (Poisoning the Poor), Basel Action Network (Digital Dump), or Blacksmith Institute (aka Pure Earth) report with CUNY.

Robin Ingenthron ‏@WR3A 8 seconds ago

Impugning Africa's repair refurbish ICT Tech Sector is the worst mistake ever made by an environmental org. Just sayin. Over an over.

Once again, here are 4 links to articles by 3rd parties who have recognized that hoaxes harm, that Africa's Tech Sector / ICT workers have been impugned, and Africa's recycling workers in Agbogblohsie have been blamed for importing devices which they collected on street corners in Africa's urban centers. Imported once, second hand, but used for 5-15 years, is not "dumping".

http://therestartproject.org/repair-elsewhere/representations-of-e-waste-matter/

http://discardstudies.com/2015/06/24/criminal-negligence/

http://shanghaiscrap.com/2015/06/anatomy-of-a-myth-the-worlds-biggest-e-waste-dump-isnt/

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/infamous-e-waste-slum-needed-us-got-razed-instead/

And it certainly did not make a lick of sense to bulldoze homes, mosques, and schoolrooms of the Agbobgloshie recycling (and onion farming, and litter collection, and water carrying) community. The predominantly Dagbani were set up like a bowling pin, knocked down, got to wearing thin.

No white money-hatted cartoon characters have been found or sent to prison in the past ten years, since BAN's "Digital Dump" morphed into Frontline / UBC Vancouver's "millions of tons", which morphed into Greenpeace in 2008 labeling Old Fadama, aka Agbogbloshie, as "Sodom and Gomorrah" and "the largest e-waste dump in the world". The story just got bigger and bigger, despite our constant cries, and the increasing number of scientific studies that found no evidence at all of "dumping". None.

The people being arrested, the owners of the seized goods, are Africa's Geeks of Color. They are bringing affordable electronic communications to inner city Africans, in the face of a European campaign called "Project Eden", the chalkboard-clawing title of Interpol's #greatwhitesavior campaign, and UNEP's Willie Horton poster boy TV repairman, #FreeHurricaneBenson.

We know what happened in Old Fadama because geeks and nerds like Alhassan Ibn Abdalla tweeted and filmed the destruction on #WorldRefugeeDay... because he lives in the real world, not in a TinTin comic, nor in jungles of "Eden". Geeks are tweeting news that winds up in the articles above on laptops and cell phones imported and repaired by Africa's Tech Sector. I'm blogging passionately because I KNOW these people, they lived in my HOUSE in Vermont. They are the best and brightest, and FairTradeRecycling has become like a modern day "underground railroad" for geeksofcolor threatened primarily by environmentalist propaganda. It's crazy. It's religious colonization all over again. Environmentalists are "here to help" by putting black people safely in chains, protecting all of London from scary African tinkerers and nerds. It's a nutty combination of Roots, Big Bang Theory, and The Shining. "Heeere's TinTin!"

Here to help

As I originally wrote in my best blog, "Why We Should Export...", republished in Motherboard in 2011, recycling was good, reuse and repair was good. African and Asian and South American geeks of color were good, creating the most progress the World Bank had ever reported in internet ICT and teledensity access, in the most sustainable and affordable way possible. With used CRT displays that lasted another 10-15 years, Accra residents were watching the World Cup, watching Colin Powell make the case for the Iraq invasion, watching ads about clean water, and checking their emails... or watching 1970s movies, for common cultural references like "The Shining" (about another mentally disturbed one-note author, played by Jack Nicholson).

Let's environmentalists retrace our steps. How did we get from speculative concern over "donated" equipment (in fact purchased and inspected by Africans), worth only 20% in scrap of the cost of transport, to demolishing homes on UN #WorldRefugeeDay, under a colonialist Biblical banner #SodomandGomorrah and #Eden?

Sure, I keep writing about the same thing. But can anyone find a WORSE case of #Charitableindustrialcomplex, #colleteraldamage, #parasitesofthepoor, #saviorcomplex, #unintendedconsequences than BAN and Greenpeace and Blacksmith Institute and UNEP's #Ewastegate? So horrifically stunning in its reality, putting Africans in European chains for fixing cell phones and TVs? It is an environmentalist horror show.

Finally an end to dumping of 15 year old city buses on Africa's Eden

"First we caught him listening to Soukous and Highlife. It was a gateway drug for apologists"

Math test:

Q: "If Ghana gets hundreds of millions of tons of e-waste per year, and e-waste is 5.76% of irony scrap (cars, white goods, appliances), and the world generates 106M tons of irony scrap, what percent of the world's e-scrap / e-waste does Ghana receive?"

A: If world e-Scrap exports are 5.76% of 106,000,000 metric tons*, then world e-scrap would be 6,105,600 tons per year. To get hundreds of millions of tons, the rest of the world has to wait for 20 years - disposing of no e-waste - and then dump it all at once on Ghana at the end of two decades.

FACT: Ghana receives somewhere between 0.000014 and 0.000439 of the world's #ewaste - between four and six /100ths of one percent.

Calculations below.

	after 90% reuse	of 570,000,000 tons (include domestic scrap)	Of 48,900,000 tons (exported only)
215000	21500	0.00003771929825	0.0004396728016
80000	8000	0.00001403508772	0.000163599182

Non toxic copper extraction

So, it's just ludicrous. If you want a higher percentage, you need a lower denominator. StEP's higher estimates numerator (215k tons) includes fridges and air conditioners and washer-dryers in "e-waste", which makes for 48.9 million tons per year worldwide. In which case, for Agbogbloshie to receive hundreds of millions of tons, it would take only 5 years of 100% of all e-waste in every country being dumped there... still ridiculous.

How would China, India, and Nigeria get their share of the "e-waste crisis" if Ghana's Agbogbloshie was being so selfish about it?

*est. based UN University 106,000,000 tons of steel exports (of 570 MT recycled... including domestic use in all nations). ratio on ISRI 76M tons irony scrap + 4.4M segregated e-scrap.

"Here to Help" Part 1: Is GAHP a Charitable Industrial Complex Honeypot?

#dennismoorecrime #environmentalmalpractice #parasitesofthepoor #whitesaviorcomplex #whiteguilt #morallicense #charitableindustrialcomplex #heretohelp

[Any photos or screen shots from the following sites below are claimed under the "fair use" exception, they are specific evidence in a commentary, policy critique, and use of public and charitable tax exempt funds]

Demonstration of $75K portion of $1.2M investment: Turning 1kg of wire worth $0.70 into 0.7 kg of wire worth $1.00

From the outset, let's acknowledge the do-gooders mean well. They are here to help. If they turned out to be what one Africa directed blogger coined as #parasitesofthepoor, or arrested one of Africa's best and brightest Tech Sector employers, it's a "Dennis Moore crime". Redistribution of recycling was trickier than they thought.

Q: Are Millions of Tons of Western "e-Waste" Dumped in Agbogblshie, Ghana?

No.

There is more and more "e-waste" in Africa. But the West (Europe and USA) are exporting fewer and fewer containers of used electronics. The implication is obvious... used electronics DID work for 5-15 years after they were imported - Africans are finally replacing TVs and computers they imported more than a decade ago.

There is no big story here, other than the fake news was faked and Joe Benson is in jail because of it.

More African city households have had multiple televisions since the 1990s. But the "sources" for the foreign dumping claim have all dried up.

John Henry: "Where did that @#$% statistic go?"

Containers of used equipment being imported into Ghana's port (Tema, not Accra) are not going directly to the Agbogbloshie scrap yard. That can be disproved from any editor's desktop, or by looking carefully at photos purporting to show it.

And there is no evidence of widespread violations of international law. 15% waste is the margin of accidental breakage, electrostatic discharge, human error, etc., and it's as likely (or more likely) to come from brand new product lots as from used.

The discussion is not about what happens to used electronic scrap. This is about is how to feel about people, and how those feelings promote a political agenda with multiple stakeholders, winners and losers.

How to feel about poor people, how to feel about non-profits, how to feel about ourselves when we consume more goods, how to feel about ourselves as do-gooders and non-profit founders..? That's far more interesting than which type of video display (used CRT or new LCD) an African with $3,000 annual income should invest in.

[Addendum 6/23/2015 - After forced evictions begin, Discard Studies essay by J. Lepawsky and G. Akese explains history and land politics]

2015 WR3A Report on Agbogbloshie: 13 Recommendations

We are in the important but slow phase of re-editing the 2015 Agbogbloshie Report. It takes time to include citations, make charts, get peer review, and especially to accommodate assertions made in this month's release of the UNEP Report. Suggestions have been made that we better recognize the "accidental nature" of misdiagnoses by well meaning members of the charitable industrial complex. (References to "hoax" and "nutjob" may make future researchers less likely to cite the report).

Statistical meat and photo-potatoes are hot and ready to eat. Presentation of the meal is important, however. We need the plates and garnishes. In the meantime, here are thirteen e-waste recommendations on the menu.

13 Recommendations E-Waste / WEEE Enforcement

Recommendation 1: UN and Interpol should immediately stop arrests and searches of used electronic product (televisions, computers, cell phones). Inspectors who were trained with the assumption of 80% waste, using Guidelines developed using the same assumptions, are likely to unfairly harass and harm Africa’s Technical Sector and create unnecessary enforcement and prison expenses in the EU.

Hoax: Investigators call out Agbogbloshie "E-Waste Tragedy"

April 23,2015

Three weeks of research at Ghana "e-waste dump" and review of UN Studies and World Bank data confirm waste in pictures was not "dumped" by Western recyclers.

As Americans and Europeans once again are confronted by photos of old white monitors and CRT televisions in a dumpsite in Accra, Ghana, recent investigation confirms suspicion that the story repeated by news sources is a hoax. Three reports on Agbogbloshie, Ghana, and "ewaste" appeared last week:

"'Developed countries export millions of tonnes of electronic waste annually into developing countries such as Ghana,' the group based in the country claims on its website." - Daily Mail

“People just load up containers to places like Ghana with enough working stuff to satisfy the importers and and then the rest is junk, and that junk gets smashed,” Puckett says. -

Wired News

"Agbogbloshie, reportedly the world’s largest e-waste dumping site... is now a field home to thousands of tons of the world’s electronics." - Washington Post

Recycling experts have long noted that the number of pieces of junk electronics visible in photos (e.g. Wired News link) do not appear to support the claims made in the articles. Several major media have reported that "millions of tons" of used western electronics are dumped in Agbogbloshie, Ghana, and that "80 percent" of used goods imported are actually not reused. The Guardian claims it is "the world's largest e-waste site". But the landscape (behind posed scrap workers) is relatively barren.

A three week investigation involving data journalists, trade news reporters, Ghana customs officials, local Dagbani speakers, and African electronics technicians found that Agbogbloshie only managed between 20 to 50 used electronic pieces per day - a nearly infinitesimal amount as compared to "millions of tons per year" claimed in mainstream press articles on the site. Most scrap workers at the site is concentrated on junk automobile recycling, and most of the wires being burned were from automobile harness wire. The electronic or "e-waste" material being recycled was collected locally, and manually, by push cart, from neighborhoods and businesses in Accra.

Is the "world's largest e-waste site" a hoax?

The researchers reviewed 2 United Nations reports from 2011 and 2012, which assessed hundreds of sea containers of electronics, to compare against the claims by NGO's. The UN reports contradict the claim that most of the goods imported are dumped in Agbolgbloshie rather than reused and repaired by Ghana technicians. World Bank metadata also supported the claims of the scrap workers that the scrapped appliances shown in films were owned by Africans and had been in use for many years. Africa has over 600 television broadcast stations.

Investigators stressed that concerns over health and pollution were genuine, and expressed particular concern over workers who eat lunch or drink water with hands contaminated by leaded soil. "We do not condone the conditions at Agbogbloshie. We only note that ending imports and arresting repairpeople will do nothing to address the problem," said Robin Ingenthron of WR3A, who organized the investigation. Copper wire burning by teenagers is not unique to Africa, however. Reports of copper wire burning in Europe and California emphasize the same "primitive recycling" practices occur in many cities, and are associated with unemployment and high copper prices.

Analysis of the claims by anti-trade NGOs showed their versions of the story to be mathematically and economically impossible. NGO press releases which simultaneously claim "millions of tons" are imported in 500 sea containers per month would indicate a sea container with well over 800,000 pounds per truckload.... the maximum one holds is 42,000 lbs. The cost of shipping used computers from the USA is approximately $10,000 - $14 per television. That is seven times more than the scrap value. While many of the alarming press releases contain data which are prima facia contradiction of the claims, an emphasis on "child workers" and exotic photography still deliver a powerful message of guilt and liability in the western press.

WR3A spokesperson Robin Ingenthron offered the reporters direct access to African technicians. The technicians participated in the investigation, and strongly cautioned editors and readers from accepting claims which do NOT interview the Africans who paid for, owned, and generated the "waste" in the photos. WR3A also provided several studies which provide actual vetted data on e-waste exports rather than rely on emotional or racially charged photos. Despite many headlines which empasize "child workers" employed in recycling, fewer than 1 percent of the workers in Agbogbloshie appeared to be under 18 years old. One young man, Rachid, was shown his own photo in a Washington Post story, which indicated he was "between 12 and 18 years old". Rachid is 22, and married, with a child.

"Africa has plenty of real problems," said Wahab Odoi, a technician and translator. "We don't need NGOs to make up pretend problems for us." Wahab Odoi suggested that donors find other causes to donate to and other environmental crimes to investigate, such as illegal ivory poaching.

A report on the trip and findings will be published soon.

http://tinyurl.com/hoaxAgbo

"eWaste Crimes in Ghana" Part 8: BAN, Blacksmith Hoax Costs EU $1,200,000

In case you missed it, here was the "good news" headline from 6 months ago (August 2014)

The purple text is my addition, by the way.

More purple underlines (article continues below)

On Monday or Tuesday, Emmanuel Nyaletey, Wahab Odoi, Wahab's cousin Peter and I will head back again to Agbogbloshie just to make sure we got this straight. What we photographed 10 days ago is supposedly the site which has received $1.2M in EU funds.

Below is my amateur film of the place where the 20-50 units (monitors, TVs, PCs) per day were getting their wires removed. (199 view limit on Youtube until I have to black out unpermissionedfaces).

I address the purple underlined "great white savior hoax" in the article above. It's the most ridiculous thing ever seen on planet earth.

I'll be back there this week, if you have questions for the 27 people in Agbogbloshie who carry 446,000 pounds, minimum (2M tons for "millions" of tons) every day to burn it. That's per person, per day. With unpowered hand-carts.

Truly the most outrageously exotic site BAN.org has ever "uncovered".

The video is not complete, it is a preview, I have to edit out faces I don't have permission from after 199 views. Though its quite ironic the people who didn't give permission...

E-Waste Tragedy 5: The Guideline to Eden

( Alternative title: The E-Waste Comedy? )

"Hurricane Joe Benson" is locked up in a UK prison, away from his family. His home is at stake, his retirement at stake, because he pleaded guilty to violating GUIDELINES. Guidelines designed by policy wonks, in response to lies, to protect Africans (from Africans)...

No offense to E-Stewards... but instead of donating to BAN.org, environmentalists should be contributing to a class action defamation lawsuit.

Here is a link to the "Guidelines", developed in Europe, to save Africans from Africans. The "Guidelines" are behind "Project Eden", INTERPOL's effort to divert some international police away from ivory, drug, and guns dealers to focus on television repair in Ghana and Nigeria. Those jobs are documented by UN research to reuse 91% of the material they import, generating 6 times the average wages in those countries, and providing access to mass media without mining, refining, generating carbon, etc.

The whole thing reminds me a bit of "Escape to Chimp Eden", the Animal Planet program hosted by Eugene Cussons. Cussons rescues poor chimpanzees and brings them safely from bad zoos to good zoos. Except that the technicians in Africa are by far smarter, and know more, than either the "experts" on "e-waste" in Europe or the chimps. They could give Kyle Wiens of IFIXIT a run for his money. This whole idea of guidelines to train Chinese and Africans to properly repair and recycle... is a tragedy in the making.

By far the worst #WhiteSaviorComplex film I have seen is Dannonitzer's "The E-Waste Tragedy". I don't like to drop the "r" word, but the film takes the word of a bigot who makes money selling shameful images and uses them to raise money for his own salary, and to put technicians in jail.

Alternative title: The E-Waste Comedy? continued