The Guardian Environmental Division Experiences Situational Irony

Carmignac photojournalism award: Ghana and e-waste

Photojournalists Muntaka Chasant and Bénédicte Kurzen and investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas have documented the flow of electronic waste between Europe and Ghana for the 13^th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award

By Muntaka Chasant, Bénédicte Kurzen, Anas Aremeyaw Anas and Fondation Carmignac

The opening paragraph of the Guardian's weekend E-Waste Ghana Story is fascinating, because it goes on to completely disprove itself in award-winning own-goalism.  The Guardian attempts to actually do what we've been calling on them to do for more than a decade - interview the diaspora and the Tech Sector in the Importing Nations, and don't focus on Basel Action Network and Greenpeace's whitemansplaining of how people buy stuff for reuse.  In so attempting, not unlike 2015's UNEP Waste Report "Waste Crime Waste Risks" (where the documentation completely obliterated the Executive Summary, see "Criminal Negligence" reviews in Discard Studies), the Guardian completely nails its own coffin.

Jerry Sekou Adara: “I had a dispute with the environment department here in Holland and we went to court. I asked them: ‘How do you come to the conclusion that these goods are waste? Who checks them?’ Deciding that something is waste is like going to the doctor. You’re told what illness you have. Don’t say a television is waste beyond repair just because you plugged it in and didn’t see any image. The judge in court was a lady and a very good judge. I said to her: ‘Look, this laptop is not waste when it’s on your table, but it is waste when in African hands.’” She knew I was telling the truth. The economy is good for the people here – they don’t suffer – and what they think of as waste here, somebody will use in Africa.”

Wikipedia Talk: Solly Granatstein CBS 60 Minutes Meta Response

Thirteen years ago, this blog reported on CBS 60 Minutes sourcing of Jim Puckett for its George Polk awarded episode "The Wasteland".  

I traded emails with producer Solly Granatstein during the original November 2008 broadcast.  I had been background sourced prior to the episode and did not know what CBS was going to say or claim. For that reason, the year before after the original broadcast, I only blogged about the actual buyers of the CRT monitors CBS aired claims were dumped for primitive recycling.  But after being ghosted by Granstein for months, I published the blog above directly taking them on.

It is not too late to learn about the Charitable-Industrial Complex and Collateral Damage. 

Now the CRT reuse business is long expired.  CRT glass is found in pending superfund sites in Phoenix AZ and Columbus OH, not in Guiyu China.  And it has been a decade since BAN's Jim Puckett tried to deny his role in the E-Waste Hoax - evidence enough that Granastein's source needed to be cross-interviewed.

So I found a Wikipedia Bio on Solly Granatstein, and did not publicly alter it in any way, but left the comments below in the Editor Talk section.  It's a hail Mary pass.  Could Mr. Granatstein consider an Ira Glass turnaround (Mike Daisy episode) now that Spain has arrested 40+ African dyaspora workers in the Canary Islands, citing the false claims CBS first gave credence?

Here's my Wikipedia Editor Talk post below.  I will post now but update links later

Three Legged Journalism: Reporter + Source + Editor > Blogger

While on summer vacation at my parents place in rural Arkansas (Buffalo National River, the only river managed by the US Department of the Interior - please don't issue mining and fracking rights here), I have a chance to reflect on journalism, and my critiques of lopsided and inaccurate reporting over the years.

Talking with Mom on the apparent loudness of politics, and tribal journalism, and bias confirmation... We settled on risk analysis, and how so many people believe in conspiracy theories.

Around here in the Ozarks, the "deep state" conspiracy is admittedly popular. I was informed yesterday (indirectly from a confidential source) that a contractor lady for Mom - sweet gal, hard worker - informed her that the Republican staff and White House lawyers who testified to Representative Thompson and Cheney's January 6 Investigation committee were "paid" to testify against Trump.  By whom? Didn't get to ask.

Now I do know on firsthand that this can happen.  Conspiracies can definitely happen. But the rumors of conspiracy travel halfway around the world while the Truth is still waking up to a hangover.

"Going Out On a Limb" however is a lot easier for a blogger than it is for an institution. It is rare that a blogger like myself should be a better source than any of the journalism institutions or international agencies that gave Anane's wildfire story on illegal e-waste dumping the oxygen to burn people like Joe "Hurricane" Benson. So today I'll reflect on how rarely anti-conspiracy experts get it right.

2020 Vision: What to Expect In Good Point Ideas

While the population in Africa is growing very quickly, it is not growing nearly as quickly as the number of televisions (and phones, computers, other electronics) per household.

When you study the number of years that Africans have been watching TV (see Dr. Graham Mytton's "Mass Communication in Africa" 1983), the shocking thing about Agbogbloshie is just how bloody few TVs are at the city dump. Africans keep fixing and fixing them, using them over and over, longer and longer.

Somehow, however, the world has been fed a story that places Africans as primitives surrounded by burning waste electronics delivered by evil people in the west.  Somehow, good reporters are sending a message to boycott and arrest citizens of Africa's Tech Sector.

Here's a 2019 report from France 24, by Franck Hersey... no evidence of any research of % of Agbogbloshie waste from electronics vs cars, no "baseline" research of how much a city like Accra normally generates (not imported waste, but eventual waste). No interview with Grace Akese, Emmanuel Nyalete, Adam Minter, Robin Nagle, Jenna Burrel, Josh Lepawsky, Ramzy Kahhat, etc. Our pal Awal Muhammed of Savelugu and Tamale - the most photographed man in Ghana - gets plenty of screentime. Franck Hersey actually films Awal pointing to a 1990s Sony TV and pretending to read that it was Made in France...



Accidentally bigoted reporting has been a theme of the blog. And its still a problem. But I'm not feeling that important to the fight any longer. Is it time for Obi Wan Ingenthron to lower his light saber and join the blue ghosts?

"Ewaste Crimes in Ghana": Intermission

End of Week 2 in Africa.

To catch everyone up, here are the cliff notes.

1) In 2002 three Americans were in Guangdong... Jim Puckett (BAN), Adam Minter (Shanghaiscrap.com), and yours truly.   We saw different things.   But the report with the least nuance (BAN's 80% dumping claim, claim that the water pollution was from e-Waste etc) got the biggest headline.  

Make the biggest claim, get the biggest coverage.

Where there's smoke, there's Tires.  Most of the visible smoke s from the tires.

2)  In fact Guiyu China was not receiving the CRT monitors, they were going to SKD semiknockdown factories for remanufacture, and the water pollution found in "Exporting Harm" was telltale from textile dying.    However, BAN ignored the nuance and created a Pledge of True Stewardship to raise more funds for their fledgling NGO.

Cultural Gulf Travels: History Videos are about People

Saw this in the Atlantic Online, via Quartz (qa.com)



It shows how intelligent rural people are attracted to culture, or simply shows urbanization, depending on your take.  It's a little tough to distinguish the two.   But the printing press, during this time, was a city device, and until the internet, literacy was correlated with printing presses, and printing presses were in cities.

In my experience in "emerging markets", aka the "developing world", electricity and internet remain urban magnets.   As aspiring people move to Accra or Lagos (see "cultural gulfs in developing markets" series), they need "good enough" display devices to do things like access the internet and watch World Cup matches and local news broadcasts.

Rommel, Africa's Desert Fox, Nazi General

From the Wikipedia:

Erwin Rommel

In the course of the war, during parliamentary debate following the fall of Tobruk, Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke of Rommel as a "daring and skillful opponent... a great General", comments for which the British Parliament considered a censure vote against Churchill. Writing about him years later, Churchill offered the following:

"His ardour, and daring, inflicted grievous disasters upon us. But he deserves the salute which I made him, in the House of Commons, in January 1942. He also deserves our respect, because although a loyal German soldier, he came to hate Hitler and all his works, and took part in the conspiracy to rescue Germany by displacing the maniac and tyrant. For this he paid the forfeit of his life. In the sombre wars of modern democracy, there is little place for chivalry.^[190]"

Rommel is regarded as having been a humane and professional officer.^[4] His Afrika Korps was never accused of war crimes, and soldiers captured during his Africa campaign were reported to have been treated humanely.^[5] Orders to kill Jewish soldiers, civilians and captured commandos were ignored.^[6] Late in the war, Rommel was linked to the conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Because Rommel was a national hero, Hitler desired to eliminate him quietly. He forced Rommel to commit suicide with a cyanide pill, in return for assurances that Rommel's family would not be persecuted following his death. He was given a state funeral, and it was announced that Rommel had succumbed to his injuries from an earlier strafing of his staff car in Normandy...

New Study: Africa's "E-Waste Hoax" is a Gift that Keeps On Taking

No surprise to regular readers of this blog...

The 5 year old hypothesis that African technicians and entrepreneurs are illegally importing "e-waste" to save money for USA and European Recyclers is still full of @#$*.

Global Circular Economy of Strategic Metals – the Best-of-two-Worlds Approach (Bo2W)
Oeko-Institut Authors Andreas Manhart , Tobias Schleicher, Stefanie Degreif

Here is the full report, view pages 13-14 at a minimum.

Study Says CBS 60 Minutes, BAN, Wrong on E-Waste Exports

Another factual study, another blow to the E-Waste Hoax.   Basel Action Network has already admitted they made the statistic up, that 80% of used TVs etc. are exported for dumping.  It was never economically possible (see Monkeys Running the Environmental Zoo), it was not supported by BAN's own study (Kenya 2006), USITC and UNEP studies in Africa found it bogus. The "kids at dumps" are best explained by the cities, like Lagos... 6.9 Million households with TV in 2007.  China throws away far more, and exports used CRTs to South America and Africa.

Now yet another very long and arduous study (to read that is) has come out, from MIT, NCER and StEP.

Quantitative Characterization of Domestic and Transboundary Flows of Used Electronics   12/2013


Huabo Duan, T. Reed Miller, Jeremy Gregory, Randolph Kirchain 

"The results show that approximately 258.2 million units of used electronic were generated and 171.4 million units were collected in the US in 2010. Export flows were estimated to be 14.4 million units, which is 8.5% of the collected estimate on average. On a weight basis, 1.6 million tons of used electronics were generated in the US in 2010 and 0.9 million tons were collected. Of the amount collected, 26.5 thousand tons were exported, which is 3.1% of the weight collected." 

- Conclusion

Once again, the facts say that exporters WERE PROBABLY INNOCENT. The methodology by Interpol's young Emile Lindemulder, in the infamous 2009 "Matrix" Report is prima facia silliness.  "The Africans PAY for the TVs and the Shipping, payment shows organization, and since 80% is criminal dumping, it's organize + crime = ORGANIZED CRIME!"   Along with the "Away is a Place" halloween language by Jim Puckett, the anti-ewaste-export hoax has been blown out of the water by the MIT study.

It's a late footnote to the "Bullyboy" series of blogs.  What in the heck is "E-Steward" besides a whites only country club?   If 80% of recyclers were indeed primitive dumpers, the badge had meaning.  Now all we have are people organized to beat an old war drum about "e-waste" exports, with no habeus corpus, no crime to speak of, except that anything above zero is suspect.  It's easier to do a DNA test than an export certification.  CBS 60 Minutes created this mess, and won't go back to correct it.