BREAKING: Lord Chris Smith's African Witch Hunt Continues: Part 1

UNEP doubled down, using photos of "primitive recycling" in its 2015 report on "e-waste".  But the actual statistics hidden throughout UNEP's own report told a different story from it's press release headline.  If the majority of sea containers of used electronics shipped from Europe are "illegal", then why do the seizures of hundreds of containers only find 1/3 which had anything illegal?

Just one of dozens of examples where the #ewastehoax needs to answer the simple question, "duh?"

UNEP is only pointing fingers, however.  One nation abandoned nuance with flair 5 years ago.  Indictments and prison sentences. While Agbo workers burn wire, England is burning witches.

The photo above shows Mike Anane of Ghana briefing reporter Raphael Rowe of BBC Panorama, on the ground in Agbogbloshie, Ghana.   Mr. Anane was back at Agbogbloshie 2 days before my arrival in March... briefing Jacopo Ottaviana of Aljazeera's #ewasterepublic... see below.

"When I look at these things, I would not call it importation. For me the bottom line is dumping, because from all of these containers that come, only about 20% are functional, and 80% are junk, garbage" - Mike Anane Aug 2014

http://tegenlicht.vpro.nl/biografieen/a/mike-anane.html

PRISON FOR DANIELS RECYCLING? 

Anane's accounts to journalists were covered on this blog a few days ago.  I met him face to face at an Interopol Meeting in Washington DC in 2010, where he presented between UK Environmental Agency Director Lord Chris Smith and Jim Puckett of BAN.  You know the claims... 80% dumping. 500 sea containers per month arriving at Agbogbloshie. The biggest E-Waste Dump in the World. Teeming with fish, Anane recounted, just 10 years earlier.

Mike Anane: "For the past 11 years. That was when I first saw the trucks with e-waste coming from the port to Agbogbloshie. Agbogbloshie happens to be a place I’m familiar with. I have been hanging around the area when it was a lush, green, beautiful wetland with lots of birds and some wildlife, and the river and the lagoon that run through the dump site had so much fish. The fishermen, the people in the communities depended on these rivers for their livelihood. Agbogbloshie used to be an amazing, beautiful wetland, a Garden of Eden. A wetland performs enormous environmental functions. When the water from the city goes to the sea, it goes through the wetland and gets filtered. Fish from the sea come and make babies. Wetlands are so important to every country, to nature, and to mankind.

"But now, the river and the lagoon are both dead: no fish, no organisms, nothing. The river and the lagoon both end up in the sea, and when the fishermen at the seaside throw their net, hoping to catch some fish, they get computers, television sets, and fridges. Their poisons spill into the sea every single day... So for me Agbogbloshie, which was a green Garden of Eden, is now paradise lost."

Note that this interview was in August 2014, describing "11 years" of experience.  But his 2010 interview with me at Interpol, he said it had been ten years.  And in his first interview, with Greenpeace in 2008, it was ten years.  And on PBS Frontline, it was since he was a boy.

My personal interview was during the meeting that set Lord Chris Smith up against Hurricane Benson. Lord Chris Smith, as I recall, introduced Jim Puckett and Mike Anane to the audience of Interpol enforcement experts.  It set up the first arrest and indictment of "Hurricane Joe Benson". And this week, LetsRecycle.com, a British environmental online newsletter, reports that "Hurricane Joe Benson" has company.

MORE AFRICAN TECHS FOR UK JAILS

Review: Jacopo Ottaviani Documentary "E-waste Republic" Mystery Vault

The great news is that  -- compared to previous articles (via BBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, NPR,  NY Times, Washington Post, Wired, etc.) -- the web documentary appearing yesterday on Al Jazeera and internazionale by young Italian reporters Jacopo Ottaviani and Isacco Chiaf, "E-waste Republic"*, is much more sophisticated.  It allows many other (English-speaking) voices to come forward and describe the nuance of a scrap problem in an African city.

* edited redirect to Der Spiegel 2022.09.27

This documentary is far ahead of the pack in documenting the complex pieces of the electronic reuse and scrap markets in Africa.   And they hit the nail on the head by stating that demolishing Agbogbloshie will make the problem worse.

Kudos to Ottaviani for interviewing second hand dealers and repair shops, and giving time to yours truly (on behalf of WR3A / Fair Trade Recycling).  They give author Adam Minter [whose own accounts of Agbogbloshie are frankly more factual] almost as much screen time as Mike Anane.  There are data and statistics, and the documentary stands apart from the lie that boycotting Africa's Geeks will somehow make wire burning juveniles "go away".  I thank and respect Ottaviani and Chiaf for taking the hours and hours to get a "whole story" perspective.

What the documentary fails to do, sadly, is to correct the proportion distortion. or the myth that import for repair is "illegal".  Like Kyle Wiens piece @Wired, Ottaviani recognizes the demolition of the slum is bad - but alsocontinues to make the story about westerners' stuff.  This continues the central conceit that Agbogbloshie's problems somehow revolve significantly around "imported e-waste".

The focus on e-waste exports in sea containers is the Mystery of Al Capone's vault, 29 years after.



[ postscript:  This was a tricky blog to write, as I respect Jacopo and Isacco and value the effort to interview #geeksofcolor and tell a nuanced account.  But it also perpetuates definitions of #ewaste that include reuse and repair, and false testimony about volumes and timelines of simply disposed waste, and honestly it does represent another example of photojournalism's need for exotic hooks. ]