Agbogbloshie Ghana: Eden & Hell Ain't What it Used to Be

The Economist Babbage Blog and recent Guardian pieces, rerunning the "A Place Called Away" portrait of Ghana Electronics recycling are kinda wow, kinda 2008.

Any true student of urban studies know that these cities are changing day by day.

I was sticking my neck out in 2010, telling folks that the Guardian Newspaper photos of 2 tons of white monitors in Agbobloshie did not prove the thesis that people like Joe Benson were "organized crime" for exporting 500 tons of black hotel televisions.  The photos at Agbogbloshie (@Guardian "Sodom and Gomorrah", another exotic biblical reference) practically disprove the allegation on their own.  1990s waste outside an African city does not mean that 2000s product purchased in Essex London is headed for the same place.

This is about People and Geography, not about Stuff.  There is no "Hell" on any geography map, and there is no "Eden",  and there is no place called "Away".   People who describe emerging markets with words like "Hell" and "Eden" have a Victorian Economist view of the world.

Or maybe it's more the Mary Poppins timeline.  Saving Mary Poppins and SavingAfrica have a certain theme in common.



Below are 4 Key "World Travellers" of 2014 who are making the great E-Waste Hoax go away.  Not with a Bang nor a whimper, but with a Tweet.

@RecyHub: The Case for Reformed Electronics Recycling Exports

  White's move...  


In the comments section on Sunday, reps from @RecyHub posted the following questions about the Fair Trade Recycling Model.  As a reminder, WR3A/FTR encourages export of used electronics to Africa, hand picked by Africans, under defined purchase orders and contracts, to meet the desire and needs of African cities.

EU RecyHub writes:

There are some issues in my mind that I think are not cleared out by your model:

- Child labour. In Agbogbloshie there are kids working with the e-waste, burning cables. Somehow, they should be considered in a model that takes into account human development, not only economical development. 

- Non-recyclable parts. Not 100% of the components are recyclable. There are hazardous parts that need to be removed and treated separately, and there are plastics that don't have any secondary market value. Those parts will be travelling together with the reusable electronics. 

How do you approach these two issues?

First, it is now very well established that the junk show in primitive scrap yards is primarily generated by Africa's cities themselves.   The two problems - child labor and difficult-to-manage components - are products of the emerging nations themselves.   A trade ban does nothing to address these problems.

Second, and on the contrary, the WR3A / fair trade recycling model uses the value of the goods to create incentives to address these problems. Instead of paying $7,000 for a containerload of televisions, the African trader could pay just $4,000 in return for a contract to eliminate child labor, recycle the plastic, etc.

This is the only model which creates $3k (or $4k, $5k, $7k) to fund proper recycling. African traders import from wealthy countries because the scrap is so much higher in (reuse) value, and OECD nations are foolish to shred that value. Keeping it out of the hands of African techs is a lose-lose proposition.

 Check. 

EU E-Waste Policy: Disarming Friendly Fire & Environmental Malpractice (Part B)

In Part A, I gave RecyHub the review they asked for, suggesting they are trying to place themselves in a halfway point between fallacy and fact.   It's a slippery slope, being cozy with a fallacy.

Why RecyHub thought we'd applaud the webpage?  Probably because in Part B, they call for "improving the informal sector".  Sounds a lot like what WR3A called "E-Waste Reform" eight years ago, when we too tried to compromise with the Ayatollah of E-Waste.

B) E-waste is a source of income and an incipient local industry. Metals and plastics can be scrapped out of old electronics and be sold in local markets for smelting and recycling, closing the materials loop. In Ghana families from the North send their kids to work in the dump because they value more the scarce but regular cash they get for the metals recovered than the irregular income from agriculture. For some Western countries it doesn’t make economic sense to manually remove the metals from e-waste, because it’s labour intensive, while for countries with lower wages it’s more suitable. In contrast, components like printed circuit boards can only be recycled in a handful of factories in the global North (and now in India too, by Attero) and therefore could be exported back, following a philosophy called “Best of Two Worlds” (PDF, 1Mb.). Improving the informal sector, including its workers’ health and safety conditions, could result in a local industry of e-waste recycling.

What about the "worst of two worlds"?   In part A, @RecyHub implies that the worst is when Europe fills boats with toxic waste electronics and dumps the waste on primitive beaches.   I don't think that's the right diagnosis.   How about an alternative diagnosis?

The worst of the West is its willingess to assume the worst of the blacks.

The "White Knights" of E-Waste reform accept a comic, rude, and insulting premise.

With less of "the right tools" we can stop shredding value to begin with.  Below is my modest proposal, our proposed model at WR3A:

1. Start with carefully assessing the situation.   Start by asking questions, get a proper diagnosis.
2. Sell Africans what they want to buy - working and repairable displays and computers.  They prefer a 3 year old they can repair to a 6 year old "tested working".   The point is, give African buyers exactly what they want. Ask them why they want things if you are confused, but don't be condescending.
3. Once a price is agreed to (about $7,000 per container), offer the Africans a deal.   Give them back $3,000 of the containerload if they take back used electronics from African cities each time they sell one.  This creates a takeback infrastructure at the used retailers, just as used auto yards are connected to the auto scrap yards.
4. With the other $4,000 buy tools, buy better used equipment, do something to incentivize the proper management of used electronics.
5. Fly your Western staff to work in Africa (as Vermont does with its staff sent to Mexico), and fly African scrappers to cross train with your staff in Europe (as Vermont does with partners in Africa, Latin America, and Asia).

This does not presume a "best" or "worst", or even the geography of "two worlds".

This takes the $7000 which is WASTED in EU WEEE shredders and uses it to finance the simple hand-disassembly which you've already recognized is a darn good job for many Africans.  I don't label this as "inside the box" because the rest of the world doesn't live in the Basel Action Network's box.  This is the same "secondary market" economy that automobiles, ink cartridges, ships and airplanes "waste" comes from.  Waste is almost never generated from the first purchaser in the chain, unless a conscious decision is made to "obsolete" it.  Wealthy people tend not to drive their new cars into the ground, or their cell phones or PCs.

WR3A's Model Improves not just the environment (reuse saves more carbon and toxics than recycling), but the entire Social Progress Index in Africa.  Africa doesn't have to make a choice between barefoot-and-pregnant backwater and brand new product.  They should be encouraged to tinker their way through the same way that Singapore, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea did, achieving economic growth by repair, recycling, knockoffs, counterfeiting, reverse engineering and contract assembly.   Africa's got Terry Gous and Simon Lins and Rowell Yangs all over their cities.  They are in their 20s and 30s now.  Give them a chance.

The poor nations growth in internet outpaced the USA's by a factor of ten - using "discarded" CRTs