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.
