Since the successful "Fair Trade Recycling Summit" at Middlebury College on Earth Week 2013, there has been a notable trend in visitors to the website (fairtraderecycling.org) and this blog.
A year ago, the deep blue in the USA (ignore Alaska s.v.p.) showed most readership here. But Europe was #2. In a given day now, Europe may not check as often.
But look at Africa and the mideast. In 873 weekly readers, Africa is showing continued interest, in our exposure of the "science" of e-waste "statistics".
The maps were well lit during the Fair Trade Recycling Summit itself. 355 page views per hour on the video alone. Some of those were "classroom" views with multiple attendees.
But as Americans shrug and say "Huh, that's interesting", and go back to recycling old "e-waste dumping" stories, the logins at African Universities and Colleges continue.
Africans know that "new" product is A) unaffordable, and B) unreliable. When there is a high number of returns on millions of units at USA's Best Buy, WalMart, or Target, they yank the product. Certain new electronics have 33% failure rate from electrostatic discharge. Where do the bad batches, new in box, go? When a Taiwanese factory gets its display units back for bad pixels counts, or electrostatic damage, or bad capacitors?
Africa.
