Fishing for Swordfish at E-Waste World: The Negro Leagues of Electronics Recycling

The Curse of the Bambino and the Basel Convention

The Blessing of Big Papi: Why Basel Needs Jackie Robinson

What Jim Puckett Can Learn from the Red Sox
(Three alternate titles)

The 2026 E-Waste World Conference in Frankfurt, Germany, had free attendance. That was a major draw for members of the World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association (WR3A), which had at least 4 attendees.  Of course, we originally had 3 attendees coming to rival E-Waste conference ICM in Valencia, Spain in January 2026.  I even bought my plane ticket to that much older conference, because it had initially accepted my proposal - Let Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network debate live on stage with two African Tech Sector geeks...

In this sports analogy blog, as we discuss Major League Baseball's integration of the "Negro League", and WSJ points out 25% of the USA FIFA Soccer Team are immigrants, we take a look at when the old oveweight player has to give up his seat on the team bench. Jim Puckett's opening statement, in his curious role as "Expert on E-Waste in Africa", was to state on the record that "First and foremost, Africa is the same as it was 20 years ago. Nothing has changed."

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So, ICM initially invited Jim to speak alongside just one of those Geeks, Nana Yaw Konodu, a German who came from Ghana about 40 years ago, but who 5 years ago opened a remanufacturing factory in Accra, Ghana. (We introduced him to Recycling International editors at the E-Waste World Conference in 2025, and he made their list of Top 100 important recyclers that year). But Nana got disinvited on very short notice....

Why is Jim's opening statement so ... weird?  Twenty years ago, he and I were quoted in Charles Schmidt's NIH article on Africa's importation of used electronics, and I was already wrong (way behind) then - but was farther ahead than Jim was. Charles Schmidt needed to interview an African who is there right now, not parse between Jim who's 20 years behind, and me who's at least ten behind.

Here's the thing: For the Basel Convention to remain in force, OECD has to be kept in a separate league from Non-OECD.  About 35% of the World's industrial economies have to be kept separate from the other 65%.  It's about protecting the job of the overweight aging baseball or football player, already sitting on the bench. if Jackie Robinson, Bob Gibson, Willie Mays, and Lou Brock are allowed to play. It's white ownership of white teams arguing about how to integrate the two leagues.

So it was "Mysteriously" that Nana Yaw Konadu was "de-invited" to ICM conference at the last possible minute (I have preserved emails). Afterwards, Nana and I canceled our trips rather than pay a thousand plus Euros to sit in the audience and listen to "Expert" Jim Puckett tell us about Africa.  Afterwards, with a little maneuvering, E-Waste World Conference in Frankfurt made hay out of that, jumping on the invitation to invite Jim Puckett, Nana Yaw Konadu and Emmanuel Nyaletey (BridgeSolarPower.com, who helped WR3A with the 2015 tours of Agbogbloshie and the 2015 Clean Hands Teaser - Hurricane Benson interview minidocumentary).

Sorry for "weaving" here. But there's a point. Conferences deciding on speakers, League owners deciding on players, International Conventions deciding upon leagues... People are setting rules, and setting them out of sight of the players and the spectators enjoying the game. ICM, E-Waste World, SERI, E-Stewards, and Basel Convention are deciding who can speak against each other, who can play against each other, and who can trade between each other. But none of the "rules" are obvious to anyone outside of their smoke-filled rooms.

This morning's Wall Street Journal Opinion Page (my comment spun into this post) is titled "America's Immigrant Soccer Team", and centers on how much of its success owes to 25% of the roster being "birthright" citizens. It's about rules set for who can play on teams based on their "nationalities", and how nationality rules are being decided by courts or Executive Orders. Like ICM and E-Waste World choosing "African Expert" Speakers, or MLB deciding who can play in each league, a "conference of parties" at Basel Secretariat are defering to OECD how to divide economies, and entire conferences are planned based on those rather random decisions.

The comment section I waded into divides MAGA Trump Support commenters from Free Market business owners (who benefit from talent in any labor situation). And as my comment calls it, the line is over what should be "legal" immigration.  Calling balls and strikes, where is that line? And how does it compare to these lines we've drawn in the past?

Immigration and talent in sports.

Baseball integration and the Negro Leagues.

OECD/non-OECD segregation in the Basel Convention debate.

Lessons from EWaste: Listening to "Others" Perspectives

Happy New Year. 

The E-Waste Export Controversy died in 2017.  All around, I see people leaving the bandwagon, addressing new emergencies (piles of CRT glass abandoned domestically), addressing new waste concerns (markets for plastics, mattress processing)

It took 5 more years after the key proponent of the "shocking" statistic about 80% e-waste dumping overseas basically admitted to making it up while soliciting donations (no proceeds of which went to the children in their "e-waste" photos) for the press to stop breathing new life into the ewaste export hoax.

Here and there, a few neophytes still refer to the E-Waste Export Controversy, recalling Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff cartoon or a poorly written UNEP press release.  UNEP for too long used photos to imply widespread dumping, working "90%" into release with pictures of kids standing on junk, despite chart after chart that disproved the 2010 narrative.  Self promoting "Ewaste Tech" fundraisers claim to have eyewitnessed thousands of orphans burning circuit boards in Agbogbloshie.  And wanna-comeback glam-rockers like Placebo's Brian Molko film scrappers holding burning rubber tires over their heads, paying them for a nice dinner... paying scrappers to monkey around with fire that otherwise fails to support itself (adding little if any value to wire).

The game is over.  Today, most reporters following up on a BAN press release find plenty of studies and articles, from numerous sources, debunking the NGO's past "reports".  BAN's executive leader often writes an op-ed attacking the credentials of the critic, but that has shown diminishing returns.  We said it here ten years ago:  "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain".

Taking a page from Scott Adams Dilbert blog, I'll take a minute to boast about my forecast of the defeat of the e-waste hoax, predictions of the ties that would emerge from the NGO's IRS990s, the involvement of "Big Shred" and "Planned Obsolescence" funding, and the shadow of racial profiling.  In 2010's Blog "Slums and Recycling and Environmental Justice"  diagnosed and foreshadowed the ailment.  In future blogs, I will tell you my secrets, with which you too may win bigly. 

"Out of the hottest fire comes the strongest steel." Chinese Proverb

Reversing Environmental Racism: Owning Your Stereotypes and Profiles

We are on the verge of turning the page on EuroCentric #CircularEconomy.  Several professionals in the European Union (and UK) have understood that Copernicus and Galileo were right, and the sustainable economy does not "revolve around" the OECD.

Five years after the IERC conference gave an Award to Jim Puckett of BAN for his "pioneering and breathless work to prevent the globalization" of used electronics management, the conference has invited Emmanuel Eric Nyalete - a native Ghanaian, Georgia Tech Coder, and former reuse department head at Good Point Recycling - to address the conference and tell them about Ghana's imports from the Tech Sector's point of view.



How did we get here?  And why did it take ten years (since publication of Greenpeace's report on Agbogbloshie) to get experts like Emmanuel, Grace Akese (of MUN), Jenna Burrell, Josh Lepawsky, and others to the podium?  And is it possible that Europe will actually contribute financially to welcome Africa's Tech Sector back to the table, and partner with them to make the world better for future generations of all races, languages, and creeds?

Heliocentrism Of E-Waste: The Economics Don't Revolve Around Us

The Sun doesn't revolve around the Earth.

Really.  It doesn't.  And the economics of "e-waste" processing doesn't revolve around you, either.



Catholic Pope Urban VIII showed the "value added" by Authority.  The Church of the Inquisition found Galileo "vehemently suspect of heresy". Galileo spent the rest of his life under house arrest. 

Today, most people know the name of Galileo.  Not many can name Pope Urban 8.  But at the time, I'm sure that was difficult to imagine.

It seemed natural, from a layperson's perspective, to think that the sun did revolve around us, and to take the Church's word for it.  People really didn't have the time or lenses, resources or motivation to test the theory.  If we wanted to know more about the origin of sun and stars, we were sent to an Authority Figure.  The Pope served as Heliocentrism's "Denier in Chief".

The Dominant Organized Religion did a lot of cool things for art and engineering, if not pure science.  Then (as today) people were impressed by the construction of huge cathedrals.  The church charged money to manage your baptism, your marriage, and your parents bodies (or your childrens') at the cemetery or mosuleum... no doubt putting in a good word with the Man Upstairs at the "end of life".

For Our New German Blog Readers: See You in Salzburg

The number of blog visits is up in 2016, compared to 2015.  Hopefully that is a sign that I've been engaged more relevant topics. Views from Europe, India and Africa grew in number and duration.

"Why We Should Ship Our Electronic 'Waste' To China and Africa" ran in Motherboard Vice five years ago.  Klaus N. read it in Germany and decided to do a piece on it for 3Sat (German language equivalent of PBS, I'm told, which broadcasts in several countries).  That led to a pretty steady dozen or so readers in West Europe.  This year, the number is close to 100.

Some of the attention is probably "reflected from the mud".  Kevin McElvaney published the arm-flailing Mike Anane's absurd claims about Agbogbloshie ("the biggest e-waste dump on earth") Sodom and Gomorrah? Fishing as a Boy?..."), which led to interviews in all kinds of German news, and led to a flurry of follow up visits to Ghana by other aspiring documentarians.  A textbook case of photojournalism running off the reservation without a hint of datajournalism to support it.  The posts here which provide links to World Bank and other data seem attractive to the photographically inspired.

In any case, Fair Trade Recycling is now a curiosity, if not a known quantity, in Europe.   I'm preparing my presentation for ICM, 16th International Electronics Recycling Congress IERC 2017 in Salzburg, Austria, where I will sit side by side with Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network on a panel in front of hundreds of European regulators and researchers.

Landscape shot of the small small site at Agbogbloshie where close ups of kids perched on monitor casings takes place

I offered to do a presentation on how incredibly small and insignificant our topic is.  How bland, how navel gazing our concerns are from the perspective of the slum dwellers we wring hands and handkerchiefs about.  The background of the landscape photo I took shows the Old Fadama slum in central Accra.  The dump is across the lagoon.  And the most photographed, if not the largest, ewaste dump on earth is there in the center, on this side of the lagoon.

No kidding, folks. This is it for wire burning. I got photos of photographers on that tiny, barren spot, posing young slum ruffians on top of some of the few dozen devices found scattered on the lagoon bank.   See the "close up" of the same site at bottom... same tent in the background.

Above is another (landscape) view of this exact site and the 25 people burning wires there. Note tent behind girl

Editors Note: Status of WR3A Good Point Blog

Blog Status December 6, 2016.

Wahab, left, points to photo in Washington Post of Idrissa, who was struck and killed by a truck in 2013 or 14

Catching up on editing 4 blog articles (from "Collateral Damage" series) and one magazine article, and preparing for my presentation at ICM in Salzburg, Austria.  Also getting all my vaccinations for the re-visit to Ghana.   I'm double checking things from the draft Fair Trade Recycling report (2015 visit).

1- Does something bad happen  at Agbogbloshie?  Bad for health, for the environment, etc.?

2- If something bad happens, is it related to unfair export and import trade?

3- If something bad happens, due to unfair trade, is it illegal or a "loophole"?

4- If something bad happens, due to unfair trade, and it is illegal, should Joe "Hurricane" Benson and other Tech Sector African businesspeople pay fines or go to prison for it?

The answer to the first question is yes and no.  Or rather, some bad things happen, and some good things (better than if the goods were in the USA or EU) happen.  The worst thing is probably the men who burn wire and then use their bare hands to scrape metal out of the dirt and ashes.  The earth there will be contaminated by lead.  Some of the lead is from automobiles, some from leaded casings in older electric wire (not computers).  If they aren't washing their hands really well, they are likely to suffer consequences.

The good thing is that the goods are used for far longer than westerners use the goods.  Even after westerners have finihsed using the electronics, Africans will tend to reuse them twice as long as that. And hand disassembly is better for the environment than shredding.  And the cost of achieving internet, phone, TV, radio and other teledensity measures, per African is a TINY FRACTION of the upstream environmental cost per capita done by Western countries.  And most of THAT damage, from mining, occurs in places like Africa.

2 - No.  The junk in Agbogbloshie is far more likely to be collected from African city residents and businesses after 10-20 years of use than it is to be imported. The people saying that it came from sea containers being dumped to avoid recycling costs are making it up at best, and in some cases lying.

3. Not under Basel Convention Annex IX.  But - in reaction (over-reaction) to lies about #2, some EU countries have passed stricter laws.  It's like if you thought bananas were poison, and passed a law against selling bananas... yeah, banana sellers would be criminals.  But seriously.

4. No. This was a witch hunt.