UN Pixelizes World: Rich City, Poor City

Wealth and population overlays with national boundaries....  The mega-city (combined borders) of Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen now hosts 120 million people!  That's comparable to Japan!  Every IPad, Android, Blackberry, and Kindle are manufactured there.  And Guiyu is their scrap yard for Chinese-grown "e-waste".

Now, as if comparing OECD Greece to non-OECD Singapore was not silly enough, look at the way cities fit in with the definitions of OECD and the Basel Convention.  83% of the world's population which lies in the "non-OECD"...  Many are poor peasants in the countryside.   But many others live in thriving urban environments.   People in the west are equating "non-OECD" with "third world", and they are quite, quite different.  The UN Report shows that cities are growing like crazy overseas, and they have billionaires and subways as well as their own dumps for their own upgraded "stuff".


The OECD, in deciding how to admit new member "nations" onto the club, has to consider the entire country, no matter how crazy the Europeans were when they drew the lines on the map.  Russia, a non-OECD member, has to answer for Siberia to get admitted.   Recent new OECD members (suddenly ok to trade with, as of last year, according to HR2284) Israel, Estonia, Slovenia and Chile have smaller borders, so perhaps it was easier to admit them.

Brazil will be a tough "country" to approve, even if Rio and San Paulo have converged into a booming mega-city.  Penang and Borneo are both inside the national boundaries of Malaysia - as Singapore used to be... expect OECD to get around to them later.  A lot of China may still be "third world-ish" for years, but look at the map of Chinese markets - cities which have converged to smart phone use on a par with USA and Europe.

So cities are growing, and changing, and getting richer, but the countrysides aren't keeping up.  Kind of like our own USA countrysides, the outskirts are where the landfills are.  Meanwhile, the mega-cities already generate most of the "e-waste" in the world...

The distribution of goods, waste, and wealth within districts of those cities of the world accounts for MOST of the trade of e-waste between "rich" and "poor"... without export or import.  The poor of Dharavi slum of Mumbai have virtually NO imports from the USA (India strictly filters and regulates scrap imports), but they have plenty of e-scrap.  The growing wealth of Mumbai creates more than enough used electronics to keep the slumdog recyclers busy.

Bloomberg News Sucks Covering Victoria's Secret

Bloomberg:  Children Toil With Bare Hands in Burkina Fields

Bloomberg reporter Cam Newton gets attention for his story slamming "fair trade" cotton.   He reports that "Victoria's Secret" uses "fairtrade cotton" and that a 13 year old girl worked for 6 months in the fields.   Slate attempts to put the story in a little more perspective (organic cotton means that weeds are pulled by hand, the girl is not a "slave")... but still, "Tsk-Tsk" is the word.

View outside my best friends home in Cameroon 1986

I work with fair trade and attempts to organize and improve life in Africa.   Specifically, I had Burkina Faso refugee in my home for 6 months, and lived in DR Congo and Cameroon.   The Slate correction to this story needs to be amplified.   Women are typically/frequently married at 13 in Burkina Faso, and for a foster child to be forbidden to work means... I guess bad news for foster children.  Because the farm went "organic" and used manure rather than chemical fertilizers, the farmer let his foster daughter carry the manure to the fields and put it on the crops.   Bloomberg says "gotcha"... thirteen year olds should be in school.

So what does Cam Newton leave us with?  Companies like Victoria's Secret will see that "no good deed goes unpunished", and the neighboring Burkina Faso fields which are not participating at all in Fair Trade will be happy they used chemical fertilizers and never got involved with "do-gooders".

This "gotcha" journalism, man-bites-dog story, attacking people who are trying to make a difference, deserves no praise.  Bloomberg is the profiteer in this story.  The reporter gets interviewed on NPR (J School 101:  Reporter Becomes Part of the Story) like some kind of a Scott Pelly Jr.  Melissa Block speaks to him as if he had done something brave, not asking a single difficult question.  I've visited the cotton plantations in the Sahel, and know how brave it ain't.  This is not war-time footage, this is not child soldiering, or toxic mining. This is black faces growing crops.

"Sparse mud walled hut home to Burkina Child Worker".  How very brave of the reporter to visit.  We are so grateful.   Listen, I lived in a house like that, and all my friends (African friends) did too.   And to suggest that we should not buy cotton from people because they are poor is beneath contempt.  If we just DON'T buy fair trade cotton, I'm not sure Clarisse will live in a ranch house, go on to college and leapfrog the whole situation...

e-Waste Poster Child Telethon from Disney (*Repost from 2011)

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Tomorrow (Monday) is our R2 Audit.  So I've invited a guest writer while I prepare the inspection paperwork.

"Hello, My name is Mowgli, and I am the spokesperson for the Poster Child Workers Union [PCWU].  You know me from my work in Hollywood's "Jungle Book".  But did you also know I was nearly used as a "poster child" for several charitable campaigns?  My creative boss at Disney frowned on that kind of thing.  Last I remember, Uncle Walt allowed my image to be used on an Italian Lira postal stamp - back in 1970 (see right).

"However, there are millions of boys and girls like me, in the developing world, who have no Disney lawyers to protect us from unauthorized use of our images.  For the most part, we don't mind so long as the photographer is trying to accomplish something good.   If my sister is in line receiving food or medicine from CARE, Save The Children, Oxfam, or Unicef, she's hardly in a position to complain, right?

"One group that has been using our images a lot is now being confronted by the PCWU union.   It's a 'watchdog' group which was taking our photos doing recycling work.   We thought recycling is good.  This is better than being a child soldier, a tantalum mine worker, a sex slave, or working in a textile mill.  Sure, our lives are tough, but if you were me, wouldn't you rather be recycling than doing something worse?  I mean, don't white boy scouts earn merit badges for recycling?

Walt Disney. (2023, July 22). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney

"Now, the official union position is that we can be bought.   Ok, that's so blunt...  But true.  We'll gag and writhe for a peso. But after the photographer leaves, what then?  Oy veh!  It turns out, no pay for the photo, and worse...! Their campaign wants to shut us down entirely!

Basel Convention vs. OECD Convergence: Export Facts

WE ARE THE 17 PERCENT.


The worst recycling practices in the world need to be cleaned up.  R2 and E-Stewards, along with different state and federal stewardship laws, create a space which Moral Recyclers need when there are tough choices to be made on recycling price points.

I agree with Basel Action Network and Computer Takeback, at least half the time.   We agree about the situation of the poorest three billion people, or half of the six billion people who do not live in OECD countries.  Lead poisoning of children is not a myth, it's a heartbreaking environmental crime.

This is why I'm so upset to see my friends falsely accused of causing it.  Good exports are different than bad exports.

Rationally, let's look at the numbers.

"Non-OECD" does not mean "primitive". It's 83% of the world, and 50% of the world economy.  I am a staunch defender of geeks and technicians who happen to live in "non-OECD" nations, who operate impressive repair, refurbish, contract manufacturing, elective upgrade, white-box manufacturing facilities, which create sustainable economies and internet access.

1. Half (50%) of the Global Economy is in Non-OECD countries.
2. Of OECD raw material exports, about half (50%) are mined ore and timber.  Half are recycled.
3. Of the recycled portion (including e-waste), it is alleged that 80% of sales are to 83% of the world's population.
4. During the past decade, growth of internet access in the non-OECD nations grew at ten times the rate as OECD nations.  They need the monitors, even used ones, for video display.

So OECD exports 80 percent of its used monitors (either shredded as raw material, or for reuse) to this 83 percent of the world.   The surprising thing would be ...anything else.  The non-OECD nations are growing, projected to be 60% of the world economy by 2030.   They are younger economies, which have less scrap and more virgin land.  Internet there is exploding.  The older economies have more scrap, and less mining and forestry as a percent of their economy.

Poisoned children in Guiyu China is not a scam or a hoax.  The hoax is that E-Stewards lends them a dime or does anything to help those children.  This is not a beauty contest, where the NGO with the most heartfelt answer gets the contract.  Fair trade recycling means locating the people doing fantastic things, like IFIXIT and WR3A members, and giving them incentives and compensation to create sustainable comfort and prosperity.  Boycotting 83% of the world because the worst 30% of the world is so, so, so sad... It's not a final answer.

And the worst recycling, even in Guiyu, beats beats lead mining in Kabwe. We have to let the developing world reuse and recycle, while giving them the financial incentives to do so in a safe and clean manner.

Fair trade is a real methodology for dealing with e-waste, based on data, trade. We don’t address “primitive” recycling practices in one area of China by boycotting the best recycling practices in the world in another part of China, or another country.

One man’s opportunity for exploitation is another person’s chance for cooperation. The ban on interracial marriage was also a bad idea,no matter how many pictures of unhappy marriages the opponents take. Love will conquer all. And I love the geeks of color in the converging economies of the rapidly developing world.

(Reprinted in Motherboard.tv   More stats below)

Recycled Content Ju-ju Words

Recycling causes tuberculosis, and other nasty reporting...

The Independent, a reputable UK Newspaper, reports with fanfare how nations are a step closer to banning the trade of used electronics to "non-OECD" nations.  In the future, western nations will still be able to mine their coral islands and rain forests for the hard rock raw and rare earth materials rich nations need to manufacture electronics.  But the emerging markets will not be able repair, knock off, refurbish or remarket our used goods... the truth about what happens to exported cell phones, as reported by The Atlantic in an article with IFIXIT.

It's not about pollution.  We know that metal mining and refining, raw materials industries, produce 45% of all toxic pollution released by all industry.  We know that the coltan mining and gold mining bring the mercury and toxics, and creates the trafficked paths to bushmeat and rare species exploitation.  We know that recycling jobs are sustainable, lasting forever, but that veins of ores become dead ends and are abandoned to become the most toxic places on earth.

It's obvious that the free market prefers reuse and recycling.   If we are to maintain the marketing campaign of planned obsolescence, we need to convince these lesser developed nations that computer repair is bad.  We need to cover up the detailed data that shows 85% of the used electronics imported are reused and refurbished.  We need to convince them that they are hazardous waste.  The Independent Article takes a step in this direction, informing us that "tuberculosis" comes from "recycling".  I had always thought it was a contagious disease associated with poverty.  If poor people recycle, and poor people are more likely to have tuberculosis, that is "just enough information" to create an impression.

From the article, one would assume it's legal for Africans to stay barefoot and pregnant, mining coltan in rain forests for us to make brand new cell phones to sell them, but NOT to fix them for revolutions in Cairo.

How does our society, whose manufacturing system is sustained by exploiting rain forests, for metal for us to make into gadgets, market the word "Recycled"?  How do we let them manage the toxics from getting raw material, without letting them fix up our old product ("market cannabalization", another nasty term I learned for "reuse and repair", from the Obsolescence Class)?  We need a system to shred product prior to shipping it for recycling (shredded goods go to China), and to mine rare earths... something that doesn't get in the way of new product sales.   We find that dictators, afraid of the access to information the internet brings, and wealthy from sale of their nations raw material resources, are happy to classify used computers as "hazardous wastes", and bring the Basel Ban Amendment closer to passage.

Does it make any sense to define secondary material (reuse, repair, recycle) as a "waste"?  Waste is excrement... we have a natural revulsion...  good.  goooood.