Einstein's Amygdala Part Four: "None of this is on the Front Page"

From our care-giving, nurturing, fear-projecting feelings - as kids have for baby rabbits.

To Rule-making - as regulators do, to make us feel like it won't happen again.

To Manipulating - Insiders using the rule-making to hobble competitors.

The people with money know how to rub our amygdalas, and we purr like cats. What we value could be the cat, could be the baby bunnies, might be the childrens' reaction to kitties and bunnies. What we need to do is realize how much is at risk in the looming great extinction.

As Twitter climate philosopher & cat-shoulder-perching specialist Ben See @ClimateBen puts it

Remember:

1. The oceans are being killed.

2. Forests will soon be gone.

3. Fertile soil is disappearing.

4. Megafauna risk extermination.

5. Insects are vanishing.

6. Climate chaos is inevitable.

7. Extinction is now.

8. Plastic is in our blood.

None of this is front page news.

Ben See's point is that what SHOULD BE front page news is NOT being covered on the front page.

What does make it to the front page is seldom-enough related to environmental protection. When we do get the attention of reader amygdalas, the story is often "gotcha'. Pollution regulation and enforcement is priotized to real estate value, and increasingly used to shore up stockholder value. (I re-read upon Keynes vs Friedman over the weekend, suffice to say both mens' concentric circles of caring gravitate towards living humans rather than those yet to be born)

In Einstein's Amygdala Part 3, the ways for-profit businesses manipulate Regulations to the detriment of competitors was portrayed as a way to massage the fear instincts which our brains have developed over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. As noted in Part 1, the list of things that might kill us was exponentially longer a mere 500 years ago, but our brains remain as hair-triggered as when we were running away from tigers, lions and bears.

Today in Part 4, I'm looking at how the finite potential we have to focus our attention is being squandered by the masturbating NGOs like Basel Action Network, those who produce ads and policies and laws and rules and outrage off of #POVERTYPORN and #POLLUTIONPORN that has ZERO association with the causes they attribute the Earth's real problems to. THIS IS A COMPLETE AND UTTER WASTE OF A FINITE AMOUNT OF ENVIRONMENTALISTS TIME AND ENERGY. AS MUCH AS I AM FOCUSED WITH ALL MY SOUL UPON MAKING THE PLANET LOVABLE FOR ALL OF OUR GRANDKIDS, I'M GUT PUNCHED BY THE CALLOUS, GREEDY WAY THAT SNAKE OIL SALESMEN ARE TRIGGERING OUR CARING AMYGDALAS WITH ZERO SCIENTIFIC BASIS OR EVEN SCANTEST OF EVIDENCE.

Once again, eye-candy poverty porn non-profit Basel Action Network has a press release this morning (but I'm putting that "below the fold")

Seven Secrets Of SECONDHAND Professionals - A Guide thru Adam Minter's Dilemmas

Blog 1,430. Fresh on the media blitz of author/journalist Adam Minter's second blockbuster - Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale - there are a lot of questions about how to deal with the growing mountains of secondhand stuff.

First, a shameless self-promoting plug. Based on my experiences - Africa Peace Corps volunteer 1980s, grandson of Ozark hillbilly families with no electricity or running water, tales-of-the-Depression-dinnertable-correspondent, used electronics recycling company entrepreneur, and former state Recycling division director (MA DEP) - I've had a chance to answer more than a few dozen of Adam Minter's questions over the years.

In fact (shameless plug), we met ten years ago next month. December 1, 2010, kicked off a period of "dueling banjo blogs", when Adam was writing about secondhand and scrap markets from Shanghai (ShanghaiScrap.com).  Here in Vermont, I was writing blog about my heroes in emerging markets, telling positive stories about differently abled poor people ingloriously described as "primitives" by white savior barbies who insist all used electronics be shredded rather than traded, and who described the purchases of secondhand stuff "illegal dumping".

[The concluding 2 chapters of his book are a distillation of ten years of correspondence between me and Adam, including his 8 trips with me to Ghana, Vermont, Boston, and the Bronx NY.]

Yesterday, before going on air (NPR On Point), Adam sent me an email reminding me of that inspiration. We met when he had just given a shoutout to the Best Recycling Blog in the World. Shameless plug, but I'll take it again, because the blogs he was attracted to were about racial profiling of secondhand reuse markets as "primitives". I'm proud that he has carried that message forward in Secondhand, and has joined the fight for Right To Repair, and against shaming secondhand trade with poverty porn.

Meet Adam in Person Thursday Nov 14 at University of Vermont Davis Center.


SEVEN SECRETS OF SECONDHAND PROFESSIONALS
A Guide Through Adam Minter's Dilemmas

Triage.  At Good Point Recycling in Middlebury, Vermont and Brockton, Massachusetts, our 40 staff have to manage up to 500,000 pounds per month of used electronics. A few of those devices are recently "electively upgraded", with a good resale value. But alas, like by Minter's other Secondhand firehose drinkers (Goodwill, Salvation Army, Japan's BookOff) we find that the vast majority has been in a closet for way too long. We send very little (5%) to the dump - mostly Ikea-grade wood from older electronics. But most of the items are going to be de-manufactured or shredded into little pieces of copper, aluminum, glass, black plastic, white plastic, circuit boards, etc.

There is a lot of value, a lot of waste, and a lot of emotional baggage. Fortunately, some things are easier than we make them out to be.

So there's a training program for the staff, based on the concept of "TRIAGE". There's a first sort, to get stuff to the department where there's an expert in that stuff (usually, de-manufacturing). Then there's a "second sort", which may mean testing the electronics to see if they work, looking up demand for them online, or removing 36 screws with 8 different screwheads using power drills. Sometimes, with things like "vintage" or antique electronics, or items that might have a hazard like lithium battery, there's a third sort, or reason to ship the third sort equipment to a different electronic specialist.

And also this hits home... All of us eventually are called to sort and settle our loved ones possessions.  Last month I flew to my 77 year old mother's home in very rural Marshal Arkansas. 29 years before my dad passed away in 2017, he had moved his own mothers STUFF from his super revered grandfather's home in Taney County Missouri. I wish I'd had 40 employee company when he did that, a lot of valuable antiques were lost, and dad  tried to save a lot of things that had only sentimental value.

Dad moved a few tons of those things to an abandoned house on their new property in Marshall, down the hill from mom's.  As giant oak trees are wont to do in Arkansas wind storms, one had sliced the abandoned house practically in half, and by the time I got there several rains (and a couple of meth-heads) had been through the place (one methhead kindly forgot all the silverware in a cottage cheese bucket near the door, probably set it down and couldn't find it again).  Anyway, I came down as a professional to "TRIAGE" the damage, and cherry pick the 20% of non- ruined stuff worth saving.

The thing I'm most grateful for finding in the destroyed home was a wood carving by my grandfather, Clarence Fisher of Ridgedale, Missouri. He taught me early on about quality, repair, and the good-enough market. He was probably born to the poorest hillbilly family in the county (his father did not read or write, signed his name with an "x"). A self-taught carpenter and subsistence farmer, he left a deep imprint on me. Adam Minter had a similar relationship with his own grandfather.

The carving I salvaged from the house is the lower one (the top carving Pa gave us as a gift, it was his last carving). He told me he was worried he might not be able to do one for everyone in the family. But later it turned out he had an idea, to make a wood carving template, so he could "mass produce" them, or some other carpenter could.  That lower one I found on the floor of his daughter (my mom in Arkansas) in the house the tree destroyed.

Adam is going to get a lot more coverage this month - C-SPAN, NPR Marketplace, and Fresh Air. And check the reviews so far in Nature, Publishers Weekly, Waste Dive, Recycling International, and NPR to name a few.  It's a great read, and if you want to hear some secret advice on the dilemmas he addresses, directly from a Reuse Pro, read on.

Five Sources of E-Scrap (ewaste) at Agbogbloshie, Ghana, Africa

I keep having to answer this specific question again and again:

"Where does the WEEE / E-Waste photographed in Africa come from? Wasn't it obviously imported?"

Sure, anything not manufactured in Africa was imported, and Africa has even less electronics manufacturing than the USA does.  But beware the "car waste" fallacy.  Junk Volkswagens at a dealership show trade-ins, after decades of use, not "illegal German a-waste dumping".

Retailers we interviewed in Ghana sell mostly used Western electronics.  They often do repairs, not just on what they import, like a car dealership that has a repair shop (most USA dealerships).

With these interviews in the background, here is a list of 5 Sources of E-Scrap at Agbogbloshie.

1. Exhausted product. For example, TVs imported to Ghana in 1970s, 80s,, 90s that are no longer worth repair.
2. Elective upgrade.  For example working VCRs which people choose to replace with DVDs, due to affluence and declining costs of newer technology (DVD players).  
3. Home Breakage.   Product damaged by electric surges (see reports on Ghana electric grid problems. This is more likely to be brand new product, lighter circuits which can't resist power surges.  It explains why Ghana consumers prefer "solid state" 1990s products.
4. Fallout of recent imports (est. 9% of new and used imports).  "Fallout" is called "breakage and spoilage" in tracking commerce.  A percentage of rice, of cars, of books, etc. always finds damage in shipping or human error.  This includes working goods which sit on the shelf too long and don't sell (and are not re-ordered).
5. Working Refrigerators, Air Conditioners, etc.  New electric standards in place in Ghana are designed for energy conservation.  Older white goods are seized by Ghana customs (working ones which are eligible for subsidy to reduce electric grid demand).

Yes.  There is scrap being recycled in ugly ways (See 2012: Ten Most Toxic Africa E-waste Recycling Practices). But the sources of that scrap are not what photojournalists claimed.

Number 1 is blatantly obvious to anyone who lived in Ghana in the 1980s and 1990s.  Ghana has 21 Television stations.  Most households in cities like greater Accra (4M residents) have had electrical appliances, computers, TVs, cell phones, radios, VCRs, etc. for decades.

2015 Imports

Ghana is generating far more "ewaste" than we can see in Agbogbloshie (which is mostly car and appliance scrap metal).  African consumers, like Americans, tend to believe a 1970s television (which they purchased in the 1980s) is more valuable than it is.  No one in Africa wants to buy a VCR, but the consumer remembers how much it costs.  USA car dealers have these discussions all the time... consumers believe their 1980s Volkswagen is worth more than the dealer does.

Number 2 is the devil wrestled with by retailers.   They must place orders now for something consumers will buy 3 months later.  Retailers can't afford to pay reuse price for scrap... no matter what the continent.  As a result, African retailers wind up with stuff "traded in" or abandoned or not picked up after repair.  Sometimes they made a mistake in importing a device... They order 3,000 large 27" CRT televisions, but can only sell 2,000 at the price they predicted.Number 5 was reported as the largest "illegal" percentage by the Ghana customs agents we interviewed, which are included in the 1/3 of randomly intercepted containers Interpol reported contained some illegal goods.  

The "elective upgrade" also impacts #4.  Consumer demand changes, and sometimes Africa's Tech Sector imports too many Pentium 3s, or non-smart-phones, or older displays.  That's the same as Western retailers who must discount stock and sell surplus.  It's not "wastecrime".  The retailer has already been punished by purchasing something, transporting it, and having to mark it down.

Repair Shop receives TVs imported 1990-2005, most by weight are not recent imports

From the Front Lines: African Technicians Jailed in England

On my way to Lyon, France, home of Interpol.   Lots of blogging in the draft folders.  But let's keep things simple.  Joe Benson of BJ Electronics was a technician of color accused by BBC and Skynet and Lord Chris Smith of the EA of wastecrime.   He was sentenced after years of appeals (which cost him more than paying the fine, I'm told).   And now he's in jail.   White environmentalists can sleep easier, knowing the black geeks aren't burning their iPhones in "witches brews" of e-waste toxics stirred by children.

What does Africa see?

1.  Teeming cities in the emerging markets generate tens of thousands of tons of municipal solid waste.  e.g. Economist 2.2014  "Nigeria’s sprawling megacity, Lagos, with a population of 21m or so, disgorges 10,000 metric tonnes of waste a day."

2.  Cities in Africa and China have had CRT televisions and monitors for decades and decades.  World Bank 2006 statistics show Nigeria already had 6.9M households with TV.

3. The cost of shipping a containerload of used CRT televisions from England to Africa costs, per television, more than four times the value of the copper that can be recovered from the TV.   A trader to Africa loses money on every junk TV shipped.

4.  Plastic shrink wrap does not have any significant effect on the damage to CRTs shipped to Africa.  It's purely cosmetic.

5.  Independent EU and African consultants examined hundreds of the sea containers with used electronics seized in African ports and during a 2 year study funded by the UN, found 91% reuse, better than brand new product.

6.  Greenpeace and Skynet had to pay 20 times scrap value to get their television with the tracking device back out of the African market.

7.  Arrest and imprisonment of THEIR Michael Dell, Simon Lin, Terry Gou... the same tinkerer-refurbishing economy that built Singapore, Shenzhen, Taiwan and Inchion is "forbidden fruit" to Africa under "Project Eden".

I have the documentation used to convict and sentence Hurricane Joe Benson to 16 months is prison.  They did NOT test his TVs, did NOT allow repair to be considered.

My thesis is that there is no evidence to justify Benson's experience except the following.

A.  Basel Action Network made up a hoax statistic that 80% of the electronics exported were scrapped by "primitive" Africans.
B.  Interpol in 2009 accepted BAN's statistic, reprinted it as an official guidance document despite 0 evidence of the statistic.
C.  Interpol did discover (expressing surprise) that the shipments were not paid for by EU waste companies to avoid disposal costs, but that the electronics were purchased by Africans ("waste tourists") for far more than the value of the scrap, that the Africans refused to buy most of the electronics they could have purchased, and that after purchasing the electronics for more than scrap value, the Africans paid shipping and customs duties on each piece.  Interpol's Emile Lindemulder described the trade as "organized" and (see A) therefore "organized crime".