Was reading a certification program's "rules" about "ready for reuse, ready for repair", and the great white bosses who are ready to save Dark Techies from buying something they want. The ad above (from Mobile Centrix) links to a video explaining "Grade A, B, and C" of "Blemish Screens". Grade A has just some bad pixels (like you'd take your phone back to the shop you bought it from yesterday, dissatisfied, for replacement). Grade B has "bleed" discoloration at the edges. Grade C has visible chip-out black spots on the edges and corners. A Rich Person's Broken Thing (Chapter of Adam Minter's Secondhand, after an explanation from my Grandpa Clarence Fisher) is the smartest thing a poor person can buy. I've seen absolutely cake-smashed screens in everyday use in Africa.... no one is without a smart phone, but no one is paying $250 for screen repair, either. Instead, they buy these from their cousins who run the kiosk for phone repairs out of your local shopping mall.
A problem recognized years ago comes into comically dramatic form in the Netflix Series "Tiger King". When megalomaniacs think their opinion is righteous, their followers and staff - and Big Cats and Export Markets - become collateral damage.
By Chris McAndrew - https://api.parliament.uk/Live/photo/bxXGHuLA.jpeg?crop=MCU_3:4&quality=80&download=trueGallery: https://beta.parliament.uk/media/bxXGHuLA, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67598764 Righteousness Trap
Lord Chris Smith [LCS](Christopher Robert Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury, PC, to be exact)inspired INTERPOL's Project Eden. He wanted to show he meant it, and demanded the prosecution of Joseph Benson. Over the course of Project Eden's 5 year mission, LCS ignored multiple studies that disproved his claim of "80%" waste dumping. He is not a bad human. He just got trapped.
He strives to be a righteous human. So righteous, in fact, that he gloried in others following him...
Into the Righteousness Trap. The initial assumption - that Africans were coming to Europe to BUY Europe's worthless e-waste - paying thousands per container to prepare, ship, and clear it through customs - and then dumping 80% of it into a city landfill - was preposterous. There is no way that Lord Chris Smith or his team interviewed a single person in Africa's Tech Sector. They had zero physical evidence of their public contention that 80% of these exports were for scrap. They wallpapered announcements with photos of African children, and described African metal recycling community with words like "pawed at" and "primitive". To an experienced exporter and former Peace Corps volunteer like yours truly, Project Eden was fundamentally bigoted at the outset. Righteous environmentalists - like priests and ayatollahs - can become blinded by praise and pride. Unconscious of their institutional racism, they never checked whether junk in Agbogbloshie is decades older than what is being imported to Africa today. They never even took the most basic step - available in seconds via online World Bank data, to see how many millions of Ghana households had at least one TV set 15 years earlier, or to compute how many TVs would be "normally" in the junkyard. They went directly to rewrite the rules to criminalize Joe Benson's business, and then spent five years making his life miserable and flagrantly declaring his guilt in the press. Exports of functional and repairable electronics empowered Africans with the critical mass of users profoundly necessary since 1960 to support the infrastructure of electric grids, radio and TV broadcasts, internet cable, dedicated satellites, and mobile phone towers. If not but FOR #freejoebenson, Africa would not have been "EDEN", your holiness, any more than Joe Exotic was preserving tiger habitat. The control of the trade by one party is control of empowerment.
Do ewaste Exporters pollute Africa, or empower Africans? A handful of experts who knew next to nothing about Africa's Tech Sector, electric grid, mass communications, consumer demand, or scrap metal recycling sector were holding meetings and conferences with each other to write the rules for Africa. They decided their answer.
The environmental WEEE policies supported by the UK mean well. They mean fabulously well. When I met Lord Chris Smith at a public meeting to launch INTERPOL’s “Project Eden”, I could see the passion towards ending what was thought to be the scourge of the planet - E-Waste exports.
The UK had made the export (except for “fully functional”) used electronics a crime. African, Asian and Latin American tech sector importers were labelled “waste tourists”. The House of Commons reported in 2012 that the exported secondhand computers represented a “strategic mineral” interest, and that whether or not they were reused (the HOC report did, to its credit, cast doubt on the “80% waste” statistic proclaimed by Lord Chris Smith), that the UK’s industrial sector needed the metals to remain in the UK’s “circular economy”.
Finally getting ready to release some major developments in the case of Joseph "Hurricane" Benson, who was first interviewed for THIS BLOG back in 2013. Unconfirmed rumors are that Benson was released some time ago, on a condition that he not speak to the press.
The term "BULLYBOYS" was Joe Benson's. His friends, Jacques and Amadou, had contacted me through the blog. They arranged a meetings - before he was sentenced to 5 years in prison by the United Kingdom.
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
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.
1) In 2002 three Americans were in Guangdong... Jim Puckett (BAN), Adam Minter (Shanghaiscrap.com), and yours truly. We saw different things. But the report with the least nuance (BAN's 80% dumping claim, claim that the water pollution was from e-Waste etc) got the biggest headline.
Make the biggest claim, get the biggest coverage.
Where there's smoke, there's Tires. Most of the visible smoke s from the tires.
2) In fact Guiyu China was not receiving the CRT monitors, they were going to SKD semiknockdown factories for remanufacture, and the water pollution found in "Exporting Harm" was telltale from textile dying. However, BAN ignored the nuance and created a Pledge of True Stewardship to raise more funds for their fledgling NGO.
Staying on subject. What lessons can the Environmental Activist Community learn from the "E-Waste Tragedy?" Does Joseph "Hurricane" Benson belong in prison? If not, how the heck did he get there, and how do we keep from making the same kind of mistake again?
Turns out, the ancient Greeks had this nailed many centuries ago.
In Orlando, at the E-Scrap 2014 Conference, I actually had a chance to speak to several people on all sides of the "Guidelines" issue. Most, including Jim Puckett, said of course Joe Benson does not belong in prison.
The person from StEP (Jaco) mostly defended the prison sentence for Benson. Jaco acknowledged the probability that 91% of Benson's sold good were actually reused, and acknowledged that most of the stuff filmed at the dump was "Post-Reuse", and generated by Ghanaians. Nevertheless Jaco made the case that "rules are rules". If the Guidelines "suggest proof of full functionality", that Benson should have known the consequences of his export activity, even if those Guidelines were based on eroneous (BAN.org) claims. Even if Benson knew they were being reused, and new he was bringing rejects back for free recycling in the UK, prison was warranted.
(Did you notice the term "Guidelines suggest proof is needed"? How about proving the suggestion is warranted?)
This logical "appeal to desperation" has also been labeled the Politician's Fallacy, and often results in prohibitions, war on drugs, 10 foot fences to foil 9 foot ladders, and many "industry self regulation" standards. There is a lot of money in providing "Something".
Having studied this for a couple of decades, I'm basically hardening in my position. Even Mr. Puckett actually offered to sign the petition, and said of course Benson should be released.
15 Reasons to Free Joseph Benson of BJ Electronics, falsely convicted of "e-waste" crime.
REMINDER: JOE BENSON, AN AFRICAN BORN TV REPAIRMAN, REMAINS IN JAIL IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, CONVICTED OF TRUMPED UP "E-WASTE EXPORT" CHARGES.
I will repost this soon with hot links to the trial documents, hopefully by this weekend.
1)The Guardian, Murdoch's SkyNews, BBC, Economist and Independent (2012) Newspapers all reacted to public statements by Lord Chris Smith's environmental agency that exports of televisions and computers for repair was "against international law".
2)The international law in question, the Basel Convention, specifically describes this as legal activity and does not ban reuse or repair, only dumping. (LCS may be referring to a proposed amendment to the Basel Convention which has not been passed or ratified. Violating a proposed rule is not a crime!)
3) The allegation made in court against the expat trader to Africa ("Hurricane" Benson) relied on "statistics" about the likelihood of dumping, provided by Greenpeace and the NGO Basel Action Network. Both of these organizations have been quoted by LCS and by the press, stating that "up to 80%" of what the African traders ship to Africa is destined for primitive recycling. NOW THEY DENY SAYING IT! That's right - nothing was found "dumped", but based on BAN.org claims, Benson's prosecutor said it was "LIKELY" dumped, and he was put in prison based on "likelihood", given BAN's statistics.
4) The photos these organizations (press and NGOs) use to make the case are taken at the city dumps of huge cities (Lagos, Accra). According to the World Bank, these countries have had millions of televisions in use for decades. The number ofNigerians with personal computers? 12 Million. The UK and "Project Eden" depict Africa as if from Disney's "Lion King", while Africans are dealing with their own growing piles of e-Scrap, cell phone towers, and massive traffic jams.
5) Photographs of junk Toyotas in London or Lagos do not prove Japanese guilty of wastecrime, and photos of junk TVs at Ghana landfills do not prove the Trader violated any laws or shipped any junk. Africa has been "rapidly developing" for decades.
6) During the widespread reporting that exports of used electronics to Africa were mostly junk, the Basel Secretariat and UNEP participated in a two year scientific analysis to research containerloads shipped from London, including many by the accused Nigerian expatriot in prison. Examination of hundreds of Sea Containers found 91% of product was useful - better than brand new product sold in Africa! MIT, Memorial University, Arizona State, USITC, and other studies all confirm the "ewaste" import statistic (80%) was a hoax.
7) Evidence presented in the UK court trial included no such test for repairability, or even tested the equipment in the containers, relying on "widespread knowledge" disseminated by Basel Action Network (repeated by Lord Chris Smith). (LINKS COMING THIS WEEKEND)
9)"Hurricane" Benson is in jail, despite no evidence of a crime, a trophy on the wall for #wastecrime enforcement. Benson's guilty plea was admitted at the end of a long appeal, when the judge had admonished him, and he was offered a commuted sentence (16 months rather than 60) only if he accepted a guilty plea.
10) The cost of shipping 500 televisions from London to Lagos or Accra is higher than the cost of recycling them in the UK... The entire "waste export" (for avoided recycling cost) theory was never tested and is mathematically impossible... it can be disproved with a simple review of Benson's receipts and costs of shipping.
11) Pages and pages of individual brands and models listed in the African traders containers in Benson's court records show relatively new units, hand selected. Who writes down the model number of a TV before they burn it??
12) The World Bank statistics on households with TV in use in Africa (e.g. 6.9 million households in Nigeria as of 2006) cannot be explained via new unit sales, and offer proof that past imports were not "mostly waste". There were not enough "new" TVs imported to explain World Bank's households-with-TV statistic.
13) The argument that "even working televisions will one day become waste" is true of brand new computers, cell phones, and TVs, and reflects a colonialist regulation. We do not restrict ourselves from importing new devices made in Asia until we have a recycling system for them in the USA.
14) Planned obsolescence and non-tariff barriers applied to the secondary market is an old trick. Recent investigations by the US International Trade Commission found absolutely no evidence of the 80% waste export claims, and no evidence that "waste" shipments to Africa were common.
15) The NGOs which raise money on the photos of children posed with E-Waste do not share a dime of the donation with the children. Rather, they seek to put the kids parents in jail.
Quantitative studies supporting Benson: 15. Evidence of Wrongdoing?: 0
Lord Chris Smith is probably not a bad person. Jim Puckett isn't a bad person. They are just wickedly late admitting they were WRONG about the "e-waste" hoax, and at this point there is an innocent man in JAIL and all I get from Basel Action Network is a statement about "collateral damage". E-Stewards have to demand this be fixed, Chris Smith needs to look at the references to his quotes in Benson's sentencing and make some calls to get Benson out of there.
Blacksmith Institute has, in 2015, abandoned it's "ranking" of "top most polluted sites", but only after offering legitimacy to the BAN fake and disavowed statistics about Agbogbloshie. The year Blacksmith listed Agbogbloshie at the top of their Top Ten List is the year Joe Benson was locked in a United Kingdom prison cell. #SHAME ON MY ENVIRONMENTALIST TRIBE.
Africans and other "geeks of color" see this as just one of many racist, colonialist, poverty porn, planned obsolescence driven acts by Europeans and do-gooders. It's a sin to kill a mockingbird.
Hurricane Joe Benson (#FreeHurricaneBenson) spent years on appeal before concluding he couldn't fight "City Hall."
"In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake." - Sayre's Law (Wallace S. Sayre)
In a small pond, big fish are kings. And intellectuals talking about a rather obscure niche of world recycling policy have become empowered by the smaller audience. You learn that the proportionality of Sayre's principle cuts both ways... the big stakes questions about recycling policy go "whoosh" over the heads of local decision makers. And the small contracts, small business disputes, small business accusations, and "people from third world countries", can whip City Hall into a frenzy.
Game Theory is the study of strategic actions in multi-decision-maker scenarios. Game Theorists may use math - especially statistics - to predict how the number of actors involved in a decision affect the outcome. Or they may measure the wealth of the outcome, and how its control affects the behavior of stakeholders and decision makers. Look at it this way - the strategy and outcome of a game of RISK is affected by the number of players. If you have six players, a goal of controlling a continent is much more difficult to achieve than a game with three players. If you get to keep the cards of an eliminated player, timing that player's elimination (so you execute their final play and get their cards) becomes more important than the extra pieces you achieve by controlling a continent.
As players are eliminated, the sea of stakeholders gets smaller and smaller. The stakes in the economy, per player, get larger.
[Note: I'm on my way to New Orleans for the Recycling Innovators Forum... leaving in 20 minutes.]
A small set of stakeholders interested in an outcome starts to resemble a "small pond", as goals and perspectives become less diverse. This in turn defines the law, or the rules about behavior concocted by the remaining participants. But as the economy or stakes become greater, more people want to play at the table. This "game theory" analysis explains a lot about electronics recycling policy, perhaps so much that no one even notices the lack of actual data on the "risks" to be mitigated. Free and fair trade is almost presumed guilty, and in a rush to make rules, any rule may do. And the rules are being made by a small group of players: OEMs, Big Shred, Poverty Pornographers, and the contract managers at City Hall.
Take an online game of poker, with real cash stakes, with players on 5 continents. A vote comes up, which lettering to use on the playing cards, Chinese characters or western Arabic?
Australia, Europe, North America, and South America vote against the Asian card numbering... and like the JDowsett's Ferguson-themed Racism by Bike Blog, the game is subtly biased in a way that a Western observer won't even notice. Language is in many ways a better lens than color or bike-vs.-car for studying how majority behavior dictates systems. Debating use of language used at "City Hall" is a better study for "tyranny of the majority", perhaps, than calling darker skin a "minority" in a world geography, precisely because it takes us away from "You're not Trayvon" jingoism.
Apparently, I'm now defending JDowsett and the Racism by Bicycle Blog. But I'm also trying to demonstrate how finger-pointing do-gooders can create a carnage of collateral damage in a rush to make rules they haven't the time to vet. Primum non nocere ... first, do no harm.
I have about 30 pages of blogs composed this summer, but the challenge is to update them as fast as the news changes.
Sometimes it's easier to point back at past predictions...
In the past year or so (not in order, and some still "breaking" news).
1. BAN denies "80% waste" statistic (denies ever saying it).
2. Peer reviewed studies from USITC, MIT, Memorial U, ASU, UNEP, etc. show 85-91% reuse.
3. Benson is reportedly released early#freehurricanebenson
4. Lord Chris Smith (UK Environmental Agency director) is replaced.
5. Vermont ANR terminates contract with CRT-landfill operation early.
6. Payment refused to local governments may be released.
7. Interpol may have hit the "pause" button on Project Enigma / Eden (unconfirmed)
8. A stampede of Europeans emerging from the trenches in Agbogbloshie to testify...
E-WASTE HOAX - NOT AS "BAN" ADVERTISED.
"Do not know what they are talking about. Making it up as they go along."
Is it juju, toxic cost avoidance, or engineering? What's behind Hurricane Joe Benson's "WasteCrime"?
"Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so." - Adam Smith
Europeans have decided to save Africans from trading with Europeans, and have made big glass "cathode ray tubes" the equivalent of ivory - trade punishable by imprisonment. Environmentalist's acceptance of the sentences passed rest in part on our cultural ignorance ("they don't even have electricity in Africa" I've read in comment threads), in part our lost repair skills, and just bad math.
Buying a used TV in Essex, paying people to list its make and model and individual price, hiring a sea container, and paying people to pack it... we can estimate how much that costs. The cost of shipping the container to an African port is somewhere between $4k and $9k (see below). The price to buy the TV from the marketplace in Lagos is known. And the number of TVs you can fit in a sea container is simple.
But somehow, race and ju-ju and pictures of kids at city dumps get in the way of a simple transaction. Technophobia, metalurgy, toxics and black people make simple trade too scary to contemplate.
Here are the mysterious parts of a display device. This one is a CRT computer monitor, but a TV is not much different ( a different tuner mainboard).
In the 1980s and earlier, you needed several different types of mainboards for televisions which worked in different nations. PAL, NTSC (National Television System Committee) , NTSC2 ("Not The Same Color" = Japan!), SECAM (Système Electronique Couleur Avec Mémoire) , MESECAM, PAL-M... For protectionist and other reasons, television analog transmissions varied country by country. If you sold a USA Television to an African country in the 1970s (before VHS tapes), you'd have a very unhappy buyer who would have to pay a TV repairperson to replace the NTSC mainboard with a "Phase Alternating Line" (or, "Pay A Lot") analog board.
This all ended in the 1990s. Remember the "converter box" for turning "rabbit ear" analog televisions into HDTV receivers? Flybacks, Heat Sinks, Horizontal Output Transistors, RGB... a whole lot of TV tuning bot put onto a motherboard which was designed to "translate" any analog signal into digital.
This new mainboard (made in Taiwan by "Taiwanese" - the people in Taiwan who make stuff) was PERFECT for SVGA monitors... they already had more DPI (dots per inch) than TV monitors. And it allowed any assembler or contract manufacturer ("Big Secret Factories") on any assembly line in the world to sell a TV to any country on any analog system. They even sold the "coverter box" to countries (I saw them in Egypt) to allow a regular old SVGA computer monitor to receive any type of analog signal.
I'm in the electronics reuse and repair business, and everyone in the emerging markets knows all this. I am dumbfounded why recyclers in rich nations don't know what I'm talking about.
Value of CRT Device = A + B + C
A= The CRT tube. If it works, it's worth $20. If it's busted it's worth -$4. That's a $24 spread.
B = The copper stuff. Circuit boards, yokes, wires, degaussing coils. SMJ* says they are worth $5.38, I'd say closer to $3, at least inside the box before you do the work. Working, they are only valuable if you have a CRT connected to them.
C = Supporting players... Plastic, steel, screws... stuff that has no purpose but to hold the CRT screen and circuit board/copperstuff together.
The scrap value = 0 + $5.38 + $0.30 , and the $0 is actually a negative number. You pay people, or a machine, to separate the stuff (but if you run it through a shredder it's worth a whole lot less than $5.68).
Now, just imagine, what if you leave these things together, in working order?
A = $20(per alibaba)
B = $5.38 (per SMJ / scrap metal junkie, see below)
C = 0.30 (handful of plastic and screws)
____
Working CRT TV or monitor = $40+ (What Joe Benson made on the TVs delivered to market in Lagos... and what Greenpeace had to pay to get them back again).
We have met the enemy, and he is us. Walt Kelley's Pogo comic was set in the deep south.
Here on the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Summer protests of Mississippi, a 52 year old from Arkansas is working to free Africans wrongfully accused of being "waste tourists" by a well meaning, but culturally tone-deaf, set of environmentalists.
David Higgins of Interpol
Lord Chris Smith of the UK Environmental Agency
Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network
Higgins had assigned a very young Dutch cop, Emile Lindemulder, to set up a task force to make some arrests of people accused of buying toxic e-waste to be burned by children in African city dumps. This blog shows some of the history, and chronology, which led to the sentencing of Hurricane Joseph Benson in June 2014, and which fuels the momentum of Project Eden...
Project Eden. Let's return Africa to its innocence, to a time without e-waste. Here is the chain of events which led to the seizures and arrests and plant closures, stopping people reprocessing CRTs for Africa (Net Peripheral), repairing computers for African internet cafes (MediCom) or selling televisions which 6.9 million Nigerians were using to watch the World Cup in 2006.
Here's how good white people became involved in a modern Oxbow Incident, accidentally profiling the geeks of color I've been fascinated by since I lived in Cameroon, Africa 1984-1986. The week I left Ngaondal, the first Cameroon television broadcasts in Adamoua Province showed the miniseries of Alex Haley's "Roots". My landlord showed it in the adjoining house, his livingroom packed, children leaning against the windows outside his house. He had purchased the first used CRT television in the town of Ngaoundal, a used RCA.
Sometime between December 1986 and now, I'm sure that TV wore out and created the first "e-waste" in my former village. Some think that makes the person who sold it to my landlord, Sgt Ndjang, somehow guilty of a wastecrime. As Graham Pickren pointed out in his doctoral thesis, the guilt of the white person who once owned the RCA seems attached, as if a fetish, to the RCA when it is discarded in Africa 15 years later. What if we sell something to an African which will eventually become waste, VT ANR staff asked my clients? By that measure, new product is also banned, and Africa will never gain access to the tree of knowledge, remaining as "Eden" forever.
The Guardian is actually a pretty excellent journal, compared to much of London's Yellow Press. So when it "recycled" some photos of scrappers in Agbogbloshie this week, actually calling it "the largest e-waste dump in the world", it got a lot of 're-tweets'.
I called them out earlier, and a journalist at Fox News called to quote my reaction. Read to the bottom of Jeremy Kaplan's piece on the "Ghana's E-waste Nightmare" to see "poverty porn" in a quotation in major news media, a possible first.
It's the mining stupid.
Six pieces of WEE sited at African city dump!! OOOGA BOOGA OOOGA BOOGA
Here are the facts:
1) None of the vintage electronics in those photos is typically purchased by African traders today. Agbogbloshie is the "end of pipe" for Accra's piping hot interenet, which grew ten-fold in the past decade (see 2 blogs back). (Eric Prempeh, Good Point's head tech, is over there now, measuring demand).
- We could go on and on here, OK Tedi Mine in Borneo, Zinc smelter spills in Guangdong, smelter spills in the Danube, lead mining in the Andes, 14 of the 15 largest Superfund sites in the USA, conflict metal mining for tantalum in Congo's river basin, zinc mines of Kunming....
It's the mining stupid.
3) Had the devices at Agbogbloshie, imported ten years ago, been shredded, African cities would still have e-waste at dumps. Had the devices, imported for reuse ten years ago, been shredded, MORE MINING would have taken place, more carbon spilled, unless you want to assume Africans never got electronic media.
"Using a used CRT for 10 years is better than mining for a flat screen" - Captain Obvious.
