Shame Blowback: Jim Puckett's 2015 Claim to be an Authority on Agbogbloshie

"The #TechSector in #EmergingMarkets honestly believes in the #CircularEconomy. But like Copernicus and Galileo, they do not believe it revolves around you." - Robin Freeland Ingenthron

That's my favorite self-quote from the past 10 years. I got to deliver it to a European Conference on E-Waste, seated side by side with Basel Action Network's executive director, Jim Puckett. 

"Shame Blowback" sometimes takes years. But Karma Occurs. 

After the laughter subsided, I told the audience that it is a bit absurd that they are relying on the advice of two white American men to explain the situation with used electronics in Africa's Tech Sector. Adam Minter later told me that #OwnVoices was a hashtag which framed that dynamic. The following year, Emmanuel Nyaletey was invited to present to the same conference audience. 

2007 Film Falsely Claimed these were illegally dumped. Lie,

Quickie documentary videos of Africa-bound sea containers shocked Europeans into twisting the Basel Convention - which explicitly identifies intent to dump, not intent to recycle or repair, as illegal - to a snare for African and Asian and Latin Americans in the reuse sector. Joe Benson was entrapped in that snare, which was baited by Jim Puckett with false claims, delivered in less than flowering Halloweenish descriptions of African Cities ("A Place Called Away"), that 80% of the trade Africans engage in is a "sham". "Millions of tons" "pawed through" by "orphans" in "the largest e-waste dump in the world".

Basel Action Network Continues Campaign of Racial Prejudice, Systemic Vocabulary Abuse, GPS Sabotage

 Every BAN press release is a lesson in vocabulary manipulation, not science.  

NGO sanctimonious vocabulary demands a rebuttal

For example, an enormous predictor that Jim is exaggerating are the words "waste" and "likely".  Jim of all people knows that "used goods" and "waste" are defined separately in international law, and that the key to guilt is intent. Otherwise, every brand new item that landed overseas - if it failed under warranty, or was damaged in shipping - would be a violation of international law.

BAN has, for two decades, tried to erase the fact that the most knowledgeable actors, the ones most in control of the trade, the purchasers least likely to waste money, are the oveseas buyers. They do not pay to ship "waste" with the intent to avoid costs they would certainly not incur, in the rich nations where they purchase surplus goods. The Action Network was exposed for fabricating a high percentage of waste (80%) (GPI blog, 2013) They did so in order to cause journalists and environmentalists to skip the side of the story from Joseph "Hurricane" Benson, and the overseas Tech Sector he came to represent. BAN issued macabre photos of dumps, where the junk being processed is mostly automotive and mostly was imported to those countries when Joe Benson would have been an apprentice TV repair tech in Nigeria... decades earlier. 

Bluntly: BAN should get a real Job

In the next decade, environmentalists must learn to drop dogmas as fast as pharmacies pull bad medicine. Good intention buys finite trust. 

Not to put too fine a point on it... The self proclaimed "Stewards" have not done much good.  They have been too timid to abandon a half truth which brought income.  They are human.

Ms. Vicki pre-electricity

Retroworks de Mexico is a fair trade, women-owned, CRT glass Test passing, socially conscious operation creating jobs for Mexicans in Mexico, sending all toxics back north.  The Watchdogs gave some tepid praise, but never publicly.  And when an investor called them about RDM, we never heard from the interested investor again.  BAN later did imply that if I adjusted my stance, they could help to leverage future investments for us... Pay to play.


We needed an investor to give the ladies electricity.  

Try to imagine how I felt. I put my damn house on the line, sent reporters, put the Las Chicas Bravas up in my home, made sure it was OECD and legal.  I flew people from Mexico to Investors Circle, to meetings with EPA headquarters in Washington, to meet with recyclers at all the big conferences.

BAN did acknowledge that Mexico was OECD, and that reuse is better than recycling.  They said they could help, if we make the Chicas an "e-Stewards" Operation.  But BAN's offer of help began with the solicitation that we pay them money, coming out of Las Chicas investment, for a copy of the standard we'd have to meet.  We had to pay money to see the rules????