A recurring theme of this "e-waste ethics" blog is the history of emerging markets, with specific emphasis on the "Asian Tiger" economies. Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, many parts of China, and now Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, hold a lot of hope for Africa.
In a crude general retelling, the Japanese copied American goods and made knock off products 60 years ago for the "Good Enough" market. Japan became economically the model for Asia (if also a menace). The the Taiwanese and the Koreans started refurbishing, reselling, repairing and knocking off Japanese and USA electronics. And we are taking about radios and stereos here, and ultimately television.
When Japan started its own CRT tube manufacturing, that was a major milestone. That meant, in the 1970s, that Japan had "arrived", was fully functional, and had shed its wartime recovery. The question is why we want to deny this path to progress to the Southern Hemisphere. The reuse, refurbishing, knock-off, assembly, disassembly and recycling jobs are all far less polluting and toxic than the mining, monoculture, and timber harvesting jobs we are giving them World Bank loans for - i.e. paying them to pursue. Refurbishing is a non-polluting, intellectually rewarding, and resource conserving path to a healthy economy, the "reverse" of the resource curse.
History shows it, and we must film our current event recycling for tomorrow's history books.
In a crude general retelling, the Japanese copied American goods and made knock off products 60 years ago for the "Good Enough" market. Japan became economically the model for Asia (if also a menace). The the Taiwanese and the Koreans started refurbishing, reselling, repairing and knocking off Japanese and USA electronics. And we are taking about radios and stereos here, and ultimately television.When Japan started its own CRT tube manufacturing, that was a major milestone. That meant, in the 1970s, that Japan had "arrived", was fully functional, and had shed its wartime recovery. The question is why we want to deny this path to progress to the Southern Hemisphere. The reuse, refurbishing, knock-off, assembly, disassembly and recycling jobs are all far less polluting and toxic than the mining, monoculture, and timber harvesting jobs we are giving them World Bank loans for - i.e. paying them to pursue. Refurbishing is a non-polluting, intellectually rewarding, and resource conserving path to a healthy economy, the "reverse" of the resource curse.
History shows it, and we must film our current event recycling for tomorrow's history books.
