How To Pay For Africa E-Waste Cleanup? Part II

So we've established that so far, "saving Africa from e-waste" has made a handsome profit for EU Policy makers, NGOs, Big Shred, and lazy photojournalists and prosecutors. 

We've established that like USA in the 1990s, Africans have a growing volume of junk televisions and computers.  Imported in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, the CRT televisions alone represent a modern "urban mining" project.

The kids at left - ALL of their grandparents had a TV when their parents were born.  This is not a "recent import" or "Basel Convention" disorder.

Here's the problem - Africa's Tech Sector, the repair and upgrade professionals, used to be able to sell third hand televisions and computers, collected from African consumers who traded them in or abandoned a repair after 'elective upgrade'.  They are increasingly finding it hard to resell 20, 30 and 40 year old "third hand" electronics.

Correctly diagnosing the problem is the first step to treatment.  Paying for the solution is the second step.

How to pay for the safe and effective recycling of used electronics abandoned at African repair shops - not by Europeans or Americans, but by African consumers who, eventually, decide not to pay for the repair of a 45 year old television set?

First, stop wasting money on environmental malpractice.

Europe's EWaste Armada: Following Captain Puckett to the Edge?

The logo to the right appeared in the NY Times Opinion Editorial section, in a n article by philanthropist Peter Buffett, titled "The Charitable-Industrial Complex"

" Between 2001 and 2011, the number of nonprofits increased 25 percent. Their growth rate now exceeds that of both the business and government sectors. It’s a massive business, with approximately $316 billion given away in 2012 in the United States alone and more than 9.4 million employed.

"Philanthropy has become the “it” vehicle to level the playing field and has generated a growing number of gatherings, workshops and affinity groups.

"As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity.

"But this just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place. The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over. Nearly every time someone feels better by doing good, on the other side of the world (or street), someone else is further locked into a system that will not allow the true flourishing of his or her nature or the opportunity to live a joyful and fulfilled life."

This #charitableindustrialcomplex meme, and #theafricathemedianevershowsyou, and #povertyporn and #parasitesofthepoor memes are not something I made up as an "ad hominem" attack on the Basel Action Network, which renewed the claim in an Op Ed this month at Resource Recycling.

"Exporting Deception:  The Disturbing Trend of Waste Trade Denial" by Jim Puckett

Jim makes some kind of association with climate change deniers, and tries to make the case that his poor non-profit is the victim of some kind of right wing conspiracy.  If his #EwasteHoax is denied, and Climate Change is denied, then obviously .. uh what?

He goes through 3 studies that I've featured here on the blog which focused on exports of second hand electronics to cities in emerging markets, studies which found about 9% of what is exported may not be repaired.  That "fallout rate" is documented in every industry, in "spoilage and breakage" statistics.  If you export 100 tons of corn, and 9 tons spoil, did you "illegally dump" nine tons of corn waste?

What is maddening is that Jim himself acknowledged the value of the study two years ago (before Hurricane Joe Benson was sentenced) and made the claim that it was better now thanks to his organizations "reform" of the trade.   But when it was pointed out that the studies were done on the very containers his organization accused, leading to seizures, (BAN Spins: How the Basel Action Network "Saved" Africa) he never replied.  We have had to attack the #ewastehoax, because he wasn't answering any questions or making any corrections, calling Joe Benson "collateral damage".

In the latest version of BAN SPINS, we see a curious loop.

"The media messengers that are now presumably in the cross-hairs of a new chorus of deniers include the most prestigious journalistic outlets in the world, including CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, AP, CNN, CBC, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, The Guardian, BBC, Al Jazeera, National Geographic, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The New York Times." - Jim Puckett

So in defense against "deniers", he cites the very articles I cited... the ones which reported him making the specific claim that 80% of what Africans and Chinese buy isn't reused but illegally dumped and burned by orphans.

Something Jim then denies.  From the first BAN Spins Blog

"Despite your reading diligence however, it is unfortunate that you did not start by questioning the baseless assertions made by Adam Minter in his reckless article.   Never has BAN ever stated that 80% of US e-waste is exported." - Jim Puckett
(-Bloomberg News)

Jim cites the organizations, which claimed the Hoax Statistics, citing Jim, which he denies giving them?  Jim defends himself with the statistics quoted by those organizations citing interviews with Jim Puckett, who denied giving them the statistic?  And this in an editorial calling African Technicians, calling Joe Benson innocent, "deniers".

 If Africans now have TV, radio, internet and cell phone use at rates competing with Europeans, it must be with brand new devices, since the used ones were dumped?

Here are the guys going to jail.

Delayed Report on WR3A Investigation of Africa Tech Sector and Agbogbloshie

Please excuse the delay in publishing the promised report on our visit to Accra, Agbogbloshie, Mole, Tamale, and Tema in March and April, 2015.

We were nearly finished with a report, and expected to post it before end of the month of May.  However, four major developments occurred in the weeks immediately preceding the publication date.

• Natural Disaster - A major flood in Accra, combined with an explosion at a gas station, killed 150 people.  During this disaster, no one was thinking about discarded appliances.
• UNEP published a lazy, poorly reviewed report (ignoring most of the studies they cite from UNU), and worse, accompanied it with a false headline of "90% illegal" (which was contradicted by the contents of the study itself).   Mathematically, how can 90% of contents be illegal if only 1/3 of seized containers contain SOME illegal material?  What mattered were the photos - eight of Agbogbloshie.
• CWIT and Interpol announced a meeting for June 24 and 25, featuring Jim Puckett of BAN and Mike Anane as speakers.   While we felt it was unlikely they would spring "new information", we were already delaying our report to address UNEP's "new information" and waiting seemed prudent.
• AMA, a local Accra municipal association destroyed Agbbogbloshie, citing "floods" and "ewaste imports", AMA sent bulldozers to knock down the homes and businesses of tens of thousands of Agbogbloshie residents and workers.  It was the beginning of Ramadan, and #UNWorldRefugeeDay and rainy season... and the bulldozing to "dredge the waterway" occurred at the populated homes side of the slum, not the abandoned side of the waterway.  

From our "e-waste" prospective (not the evicted's), what's most important about the last point were a couple of hours of filmed interviews we have, with Ghana technicians and scrappers.  Some had told us, when I asked "why?" about the #ewastehoax of Agbogbloshie, that they believed it was part of a propaganda campaign to take their land.  

I reviewed the maps and it was definitely true that Agbogbloshie, described as the remote "outskirts" or "nearby cities like Accra" in Greenpeace and other NGO reports, is smack dab in the middle of the city, 9 minutes from the most luxurious hotels, less from major banks and government complexes.  But in the first draft of the report, I avoided mentioning it, as I thought it came across as rather paranoid.  Now, after the evictions and apparent razing of the scrap businesses, I have to  check that dismissal...

The entanglement of Western second hand goods export and urban planning in Ghana is complicated. In writing the report, we need to check our outrage, and report the facts.

Recommendations to CWIT, INTERPOL on WEEE EWaste Project

delivered by Twitter, Linkedin, and Blogspot


June 25, 2015

David Higgins
Pascal LeRoy


Dear Pascal and David,

Thank you for Pascal's response to our initial draft of comments for the CWIT meeting in Lyon in June.   In addition to presenting more factual numbers, it is important that the CWIT group focus on percentages, not tons.

Ghana's secondhand imports, estimated at 215,000 tons, includes approximately 21,000 tons not reused. That's a real problem, but smaller than the generation of once-reused, now discarded electronics (and cars, and other machines) as cities like Accra modernize.  The generation predicted by World Bank and other sources will require in-country solutions, much greater than "informal" scrapyards (like Agbogbloshie) can offer. 

The ratio of fallout from secondhand electronics imports is similar to clothing, new electronics, automobiles, cell phones, broadcasting equipment.  No import container is perfect.  Shipping damage, human error, demand forecast changes, electrostatic discharge, and other fallout cannot be termed "illegal waste transport" without impacting all development. Criminal enforcement should be directed at goods (such as ivory) which is 100% illegal.

We recommend Interpol and CWIT start discussing acceptable "de minimus" quantities, and whether the testing Guidelines (used in prosecutions) is a good predictor of percentages.  And please, incorporate discussions with Africa's Tech Sector.  They are the ones who send contacts to Europe to source proper reuse equipment, they are the ones who pay for the equipment, they are the ones who have created double and triple-digit teledensity growth for Africans this decade.  Their supply to the "good enough" market creates the critical mass of users which makes paving roads, laying internet cable, erecting cell phone towers, etc., economically feasible.

We can introduce you to several speakers, or university research departments, who know these technicians, who would have been a valuable addition to your list of experts.  Here are some articles written by westerners who accepted this invitation, and met with these champions of the Emerging Market.  Fair Trade Recycling (tm) goal is to engage these technicians in managing the takeback of used electronics, and pay for their proper recycling by donating MORE used equipment at lower prices, rather than by driving up price and lowering demand in the current "Prohibition" enforcement model.


I will be arriving in Lyon (previously scheduled business) on July 1, if anyone from Interpol is interested in meeting to discuss a more progressive agenda to the media-driven "export crisis". In the meantime, here are some articles we recommend for distribution to your guests and attendees.

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://yourshot.nationalgeographic.com/profile/1018351/

Sincerely,

- Robin Ingenthron, WR3A.org 



PS.  The illegal goods reported in Ghana were refrigerators which work, and which are eligible for a subsidized program to replace them with energy efficient models.   Stating that 1/3 of inspections found illegal goods should differentiate between the energy efficiency ban (not widely understood by importers) and illegal dumping.

Open WR3A Letter to CWIT / @Interpol on #Ewaste

DRAFT OPEN LETTER

Please send edits, suggestions, comments either by commenting under this draft or by email or tweet to yourname at wr3a.org.


Mr. Pascal LeRoy
Mr. David Higgins
Countering WEEE Illegal Trade (CWIT) 


Dear Sirs,

As you may know, WR3A (dba "Fair Trade Recycling") is an NGO business consortium which seeks to support businesspeople in emerging markets.  WR3A offers discounts on the cost of legitimate used electronic devices as an incentive to create takeback and proper recycling channels in those emerging markets.

We appreciate the advance copies of the CWIT literature [links below] which will guide the discussions in Lyon, France, next week.   While I will be in Lyon (previously scheduled) a few days later, I cannot afford to change my ticket.  Worse, the Association has just completed a major field work in Ghana and does not have the resources to bring representatives of Africa's Tech Sector to the meeting.   Therefore I have prepared this letter to convey our thoughts on this process.

The CWIT report contains a chart (from World Bank) showing electrification rates in several African countries.  We immediately noticed that the first statistic for Ghana was incorrect, perhaps because it is frequently updated.   Understandable, since the statistics on electricity and teledensity in Africa are changing at double and triple digits each year.

What we would like CWIT to learn from this is that import of used electric and electronic devices is not driven by European shredding costs.  It is actually driven by this rapidly changing statistic.

Stating the percentage of household electrification rates in Africa without stating the rate of growth can lead to wrong conclusions.   The relatively low percentage of homes with electricity (as compared to the EU) might imply, to some, that the sales of used electronic appliances are less likely to be "legitimate".

In fact, it is the rate of growth of electrification which predicts demand.

In the USA, for example, the poorest parts of the country were the last to get electricity.  When hydroelectric dams came to the Ozark Mountains, my family members drove to cities like Chicago or St. Louis to purchase used appliances.  Memphis, though closer, had a higher poverty rate, fewer used appliances, and more buyer competition.  If you are poor but making progress, your smartest move is to purchase used goods from wealthy geographies.

Similar modelling accounts for sales of automobiles in geographies which were rapidly paving roads (again, the Ozarks is a good example).   The last place to get paved roads had the highest rates of purchase of both new and used cars, and the ratio of used cars to new cars looked very similar to the rates of used vs. new sales of electronics in Africa.

The CWIT Interpol literature uses works like "illegitimate" and "informal" and "criminal" to describe well established supply and demand patterns.  Perhaps when Germany was reunited, the demand for used cars in East Germany and Poland was driven by a desire in Western Germany to avoid the cost of properly recycling autos...  But if Interpol had targeted auto mechanics in East Germany and Poland, it would have been a poor use of limited enforcement resources, discouraged agents of conscience, and thus attracted criminal enterprise to an otherwise mundane exchange of "good enough" products.

The growth of teledensity (internet, television, cell phone) in Africa is a marvelous story, and one written by canny Africans in the Tech Sector.   The best and brightest students are reading tech repair manuals, hacking phones, and finding the cheapest display devices (ones which last 20 years but are replaced in the West after 4 years are a ripe target).

Language with biblical and "halloween" references, and many photos describing "e-waste" businesses, tend to marginalize, exoticize, and otherize these technicians.  The UNEP's recent use of Agbogbloshie photos to describe Africa's Tech Sector was thoughtless and ill considered.  Similar propaganda was used to describe Simon Lin, Terry Gou, Lee Byung-chul, Chung Ju-jung, and others who repaired and tinkered their way into multibillion dollar economies which lifted the living standards of their compatriots in the most sustainable and environmentally sound manner available - through sustainable reuse, repair and refurbishment.   

If Africa is to meet its own potential, mining ores and shredding working devices is the least sustainable path.  But the demand will be met... there is no "Eden" to shepherd Africans to, and no "Sodom and Gomorrah" to take them away from.  It is fruitless and pointless to try to arrest all the geeks and nerds in Africa.  They are too many.  Crackdowns on internet cafe investors have already occurred in Africa, using "e-waste" as an excuse.   As we say in the Ozarks, "We don't have a dog in that fight."

Export for reuse and repair is explicitly legal in the Basel Convention, Annex IX.  The title of the UNEP Report contains a line about "inconsistencies", which describes well the challenges Interpol will face in enforcing EU interpretations which create new interpretations of the Convention, lined against the forces of supply and demand.   We would ask why, when rhino poaching and child labor and sex trafficking and arms trafficking and conflict metal mining are such a blight, Europe would want to add reuse and repair of electronics to the list that only criminals would succeed at.  Africans have real problems.  Reusing goods is not one of them.

Unintended consequences, collateral damage, friendly fire... These have been offered as excuses for false descriptions of statistics for ten years.  We are asking Interpol to suspend the enforcement of Project Eden until you have met the technicians who not only import used electronics, but have raised Africa's teledensity far beyond the wildest goals set by the most aggressive UN ICT or UNCTAD planners in the 1990s.   Decriminalizing things which should not be criminal is the most difficult, but wisest, challenge for regulators. 

Robin Ingenthron

DRAFT


Founder, WR3A
fairtraderecycling.org

6 Observations: UNEP Report Earns "F" on #E-waste

Illegally Traded and Dumped E-Waste Worth up to $19 Billion Annually Poses Risks to Health, Deprives Countries of Resources says UN Report

WASTE CRIME – WASTE RISKS: GAPS IN MEETING THE 

GLOBAL WASTE CHALLENGE (2015)

"a rapid response assessment"

“Inconsistency in Cross-Border Regulations Challenge to Effective Control of Illegal Waste Trafficking”.  This is the sub-headline of the United Nations Environmental Programme’s May 12, 2016, press release.  The headline of the report states the trade is worth $19 billion, poses risks to health, and deprives countries (European countries) of resources.  

Say this slowly. Inconsistency in regulations... between countries... is a challenge to arresting people... for illegal activity... because it's not illegal.... in the other country? And therefore (by not making second hand goods illegal), the second country is "depriving (Europe) of resources?"

Four "e-waste experts" are on the team of 16 authors. I've highlighted their names at the bottom.

We counted 43 photos in the report, eight of which are taken at Accra scrapyard Agbogbloshie.

And the adjectives..."primitive", "informal", "deplorable"...

These are the insults slung at the geeks of color, the workers in Africa's tech sector and manual disassembly operations. Perhaps, the authors "assessed" and "responded" too "rapidly". My own report has been slowed down, in contrast. I planned 10 pages, but was dealt with two curve balls on my return to the USA. First, Interpol announced a big EWaste (CWIT) meeting in Lyon, France - where I already have a ticket (was going to be there anyway). The CWIT features another 2010 performance by Jim Puckett and Mike Anane.

How about this for a response? READ YOUR OWN DARN REPORT NUMBERS!!!

Doubt I have ever seen such an incompetently written press release. To rebut the UNEP's headline, look at the report's own figures. It appears the authors were so excited by the prospect of more funding that they looked only at the black children posed on obscure lonely pieces of Ghana generated e-waste (imported 20 years earlier, now discarded), and didn't study the numbers in the report itself. THE REPORT DISPROVES ITS OWN HEADLINE. If that's not a key indicator of Racial Profiling, I'm not sure what's a better one.

The UNEP Report announced that ten European Countries in 2012 (year of the E-Waste Country Assessments in Nigeria and Ghana, finding 85%-91% reuse) shipped 2,929 tonnes of "e-waste" (or reuse, the report doesn't specify) to five countries - 4 in West Africa plus Pakistan. Ghana is profiled as the biggest target, and eight photos of Agbogbloshie illustrate the case.

Spoiler - our analysis was that Agbogbloshie manages (outside of cars and white goods) about 910,000 POUNDS (not tons) of electronics scrap, delivered by hand cart from street collectors in Accra. This week Scrap Magazine (p.78) publishes an article by Adam Minter (Junkyard Planet author), who we met in Agbogbloshie. The cover page photo shows how most of the material is delivered.

See below left. By hand cart. Pickup trucks on occasion. Zero sea containers. But access roads into Agbogbloshie and outgoing wire, plastic, and circuit board (bottleneck) weights support the estimates of the workers there. Agbogbloshie manages between 20-50 pieces (TVs, VCRs, computers) per day. The pieces on the ground in the UNEP (Kevin McElvaney) photos look like they've been there a long time. And they have been.

About 910,000 pounds per year. Disassembled by hand, delivered by hand cart.

Now look at the UNEP Report figures, configured below.

Convert 2,929 million tonnes (metric) to pounds (x 2200) = 6,443,800,000 lbs. Six billion per year, from ten countries - not including the USA or Asia - of "e-waste". Divide 910k by 6,443,800k.

One of the five largest destinations handles about one fiftieth of one percent. 

Two conclusions are possible... if one assumes 100% of the material at Agbogbloshie is imported from Europe, and none of it was used for decades in Accra (which had tens of thousands of households with TV in the 1990s), then:

1. Although Agbogbloshie is on the top 5 destinations list, it manages only about 2 percent of ONE percent (0.0002) of Europe's "ewaste".
2. UNEP and Interpol are using Secondary Market (non-scrap, reuse) numbers in their "e-waste dumping" statistic.

Of course, if at least half of Agbogbloshie's volume was domestically generated, and the imports are one percent of one percent, the UNEP Report (shockingly) tries to explain that...

If the latter, the $19B suddenly becomes confusing if not meaningless. Africans buying used laptops on ebay is certainly legal... and Ebay has annouonced a $195 billion dollar market selling to emerging markets. Who knows what percentage of $195b is used electronics. But if it's 10%, then UNEP's $19B number looks low.

Below is an analysis of the UNEP Report which I've had to cut from my report (in order to respect my page limit).  It begins with UNEP making the massive case for millions of tons, then shows how Interpol's seizures only implicate 2-3 times the 9-15% waste estimate of the E-Waste Assessment studies.   Interpol accuses one third of the shipments of containing some waste.

It covers 6 observations about the report, Debate Team style.

OBSERVATION NUMBER ONE: One Third does not equal 90%

The report's own numbers disprove the 90% allegation.

"There were also checks in Ghana, Guinea, and Nigeria in Africa, a region considered to be a destination for this waste. Almost one-third of the checks resulted in the discovery of illegal electronic waste.”*

We found most of these to be electric, not electronic waste.  White goods being reused, illegal due to Ghana appliance refund-takeback program - which targeted WORKING fridges (because they were older and used more of Ghana's scarce electricity).  In any case this "discovery" is legally an allegation at this point.  And most importantly, how the heck do they explain the "90%" illegal headline if 2/3 of the cases against suspect containers are dismissed??? Finally, if you "discovered" some in 1/3 of the containers, how much of those containers was allegedly illegal?  If 50% of "almost one third"... we have verification of the Ghana E-Waste Assessment Study (15%), don't we?

One third contained "illegal" imported EEE. Not WEEE (unless W stands for "Working")

Our interviews with custom officials in Tema indicate that seizure of working but eligible-for-rebate refrigerators were the only items declared illegal at the Tema port courtyard.

OBSERVATION NUMBER TWO:  Prima Facia Evidence of Legal Incompetence.

The report's claimed 'cause' of illegal transport is disagreement over illegality.

“Identifying and classifying electronic and electrical equipment as waste may be challenging. One could argue that used or discarded equipment could still be of value to others and therefore should not be considered waste. However, the life span of second-hand goods is very short, and within a couple of years it becomes discarded waste. " 

Nuff said.  They are frustrated that it's legal. See #1 above. Also, brand new devices fail the same test (more often, according to African technicians).  Is this what "Project Eden" means, reversing Africa's teledensity? And on what is the objective evidence of "a couple of years"?  BAN claimed they were discarded "within days". BAN made up the 80% figure. What does UNEP ("90%", "couple of years") have in common with BAN? Fundraising is easier when numbers are more salacious.

OBSERVATION NUMBER THREE:  Theory of "Drivers" is Disproven by Evidence

The report's theory of causes of trade is disproved by the report.

“The main drivers of the trade in hazardous waste appear to be the high costs of proper treatment and the opportunities for illegal actors to operate in a market with relatively low risks and high financial benefit. In addition, low shipping costs and demand for certain types of used goods and constituents in some countries can be a driver for the illegal export of waste to developing countries (Bisschop 2012)." 

Ahh.  Appear to be... to you?  But the 5 countries shown on the chart have the highest shipping costs on the planet.  The low shipping cost (cited) was for China.  USA-Ghana is about $7,000 or $14 per CRT.  And the scrap value for the CRT is only $2, so the "demand for certain types of used goods" (and not others) is explained only by reuse.  "Appear to be" is in the eye of the group seeking funding for more studies... it appears to ME to be racial profiling.

OBSERVATION NUMBER FOUR: Evidence of Value is NOT Evidence of Waste.

Payment for goods shown in report is not evidence of "waste" or "illegality".

"The owner/producer of the waste can pay a waste broker to take the waste off his hands for further recycling. Waste brokers maximize their profit through getting paid first by the player disposing of the waste and second by the player who buys it as a reusable commodity. "

First, no one pays the "waste brokers" who ship to Africa (if they do, it probably really IS waste, like Trafigura, and UNEP should focus and enforce there!). Second, if it only works because it's a "reusable commodity"... See #1, and subtitle. Frustrating that you cannot enforce against the "wastecrime" because of that stubborn "reuse innocence" thing.

OBSERVATION NUMBER FIVE: Only Conviction Doesn't Fit Theory

Conviction example (Benson) undermines case, demonstrates Observations 1-4

"Investigators found the defendant had been collecting e-waste from a number of council-run sites in the London area and taking it to his licensed waste premises. Instead of processing the e-waste properly, he sold and loaded four containers of items – including cathode ray TVs and fridge freezers with ozone depleting substances– to brokers and shipping firms who then exported the waste to West Africa. He loaded items at the front of the containers that appeared to have been tested properly for functionality and even put “testing labels” on them."

We have 100+ pages of documented evidence in the case, none shows freon appliances in Benson's containers and he denies being in that business and there are none in the photos.  His company license was a REUSE license, not a "waste processing license".  But that's all secondary evidence, the point here is that it doesn't fit any of the theories presented in this UNEP report.  Shipping costs were high, cost for Benson to return items (which he documented doing, after failed testing) was $0 at the council-run sites.  And repair is legal, a "cut cord" (cited as evidence of not being tested) is a simple repair, a most obvious "for repair" case under Annex IX Basel Convention.  Benson would lose money on the bad ones, which he could recycle in the UK for free.

OBSERVATION NUMBER SIX: No habeus corpus.

See math. If Ghana is at top of 5 country list, and Agbogbloshie is the largest site in Ghana, hand carts and tire fires cannot possibly manage millions or hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands - or even 1% - of tons claimed in the report.

Larger diagram below

Number Five is Fair Trade Recycling's "Hurricane Benson".   Their star example, Joe Benson of BJ Electronics, as being the kingpin, the example of the bad dealer, and proudly trumpets his 16 month prison sentence... 

But all the math in their own report indicates there is no Benson material dumped at Agbogbloshie.  Tying black Benson, a TV repairman, to black Rachid, Awal, and Razak (my new chums in Agbogbloshie) is racial profiling - you may as well tie him to Kofi Anan or Nelson Mandela or Hurricane Carter or Joe Johnson (the boxer).

Joe Benson may not be perfect, I've met him only after his indictment, and have never traded with him.  But I have seen the "evidence" against him, and it's based on the same bad math as riddles this UNEP Report, making Joe Benson the most important example of legal abuse.  

• Only reuse explains African incentives.
• Only reuse explains African growth in teledensity.
• Only reuse explains the $19B dollars cited.
• Only reuse explains the costs paid to load, ship, and unload the electronics.

The authors of these reports have jobs to "solve" #ewaste, and the conclusions between the lines of their reports are that they need more resources, to arrest more #freejoebensons.  This is #whitesaviorcomplex at best, and #parasitesofthepoor or #charityindustrialcomplex at its worst.

So we meet, head to head.  Sixteen paid UNEP experts, armed with professional photography, vs. one lonely blogger.  

ENVIRONMENTAL MALPRACTICE AND FALSE PROSECUTION.

INJUSTICE AND RACISM AND PROTECTIONISM OF EU SHREDDING INTERESTS.

THIS IS A SCANDAL.  THIS IS #EWASTEGATE.

Academic peer review is occurring (Josh Goldstein and Josh Lepawsky are separately reviewing the UNEP Report), reporters like Adam Minter are taking the time to examine the case, Africans like Wahab Odoi Muhammed and Emmanuel Nyaletey are coming forward, and other photojournalists, less driven by "poverty porn" (like Heather Agyepong) are finding out about the Ewaste Hoax on their own.

Below is the rough analysis of the UNEP Report cut from my own Agbobloshie Report, which has larger paragraphs for better context of the quotes above (I have footnotes as well).  But it's almost 9 AM and I have a recycling factory to run... a plant which manually disassembles most of the electronics, because no one would want them or would want to pay to ship them to Africa.  Everyone in our business knows that.  Everyone in EScrap knows this is a hoax, that there are no Africans buying thousands of containers of packed junk.

Africa's best and brightest, the Tech Sector which brought double-digit and triple-digit teledensity growth to the "dark continent", year upon year.   The Tinkerer's Blessing is the opposite of the curse of natural resources.  We have met the enemy, and he is us.