First things first. Let me welcome Elizabeth Chamberlin of IFIXIT.org, a new blogger using Kyle's photos to tell the other side of the story. She came charging out of the gate last week. Hope she puts me out of business.
Second, for a wider audience, ALJAZEERA is back on the job, and getting closer. Reporter Sohail Rahman is NOT reporting a "feel-good story" on e-waste in Al-Jazeera, but it's fair. He documents both good (recycling and reuse rates), bad (aqua regia and toxic recycling processes) and ugly (women doing hard recycling work without toxics, but without sophisticated tools either).
Obviously a "ban on exports" will do nothing for Mowgli's Sister Meena (interviewed in the film). Almost as obviously, the recycling shown kicks the bejeezus out of Mining and Smelting and Disposal as an environmental process. What bugs us are images of poverty. Most Americans want to vote whatever takes the photos off the screen. Banning trade with these people, however, is just turning our heads, it does nothing to help. She says in the interview that the boss gets the money and decides what to pay her. What we want to do is give the boss even nicer material, with more repair value, from richer neighborhoods - in return for sharing the proceeds fairly with Meena. That, says BAN.org, makes me an "apologist" and makes Meena "a polluter".
This film shows a lot of what I saw nine and a half years ago when I visited Guangzhou. Except its missing the also really cool and great stories of Techs of Color fixing and reusing and Tinkering, riffing like guitarists, whipping new uses out of old chips and display units, turning yesterday's CRT monitor into tomorrow's TV-Video-Monitor combo with all-bandwidth tuner technology.
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| Actual interview with actual recycler |
Obviously a "ban on exports" will do nothing for Mowgli's Sister Meena (interviewed in the film). Almost as obviously, the recycling shown kicks the bejeezus out of Mining and Smelting and Disposal as an environmental process. What bugs us are images of poverty. Most Americans want to vote whatever takes the photos off the screen. Banning trade with these people, however, is just turning our heads, it does nothing to help. She says in the interview that the boss gets the money and decides what to pay her. What we want to do is give the boss even nicer material, with more repair value, from richer neighborhoods - in return for sharing the proceeds fairly with Meena. That, says BAN.org, makes me an "apologist" and makes Meena "a polluter".
This film shows a lot of what I saw nine and a half years ago when I visited Guangzhou. Except its missing the also really cool and great stories of Techs of Color fixing and reusing and Tinkering, riffing like guitarists, whipping new uses out of old chips and display units, turning yesterday's CRT monitor into tomorrow's TV-Video-Monitor combo with all-bandwidth tuner technology.
