How To Pay For Africa E-Waste Cleanup? Part II

So we've established that so far, "saving Africa from e-waste" has made a handsome profit for EU Policy makers, NGOs, Big Shred, and lazy photojournalists and prosecutors. 

We've established that like USA in the 1990s, Africans have a growing volume of junk televisions and computers.  Imported in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, the CRT televisions alone represent a modern "urban mining" project.

The kids at left - ALL of their grandparents had a TV when their parents were born.  This is not a "recent import" or "Basel Convention" disorder.

Here's the problem - Africa's Tech Sector, the repair and upgrade professionals, used to be able to sell third hand televisions and computers, collected from African consumers who traded them in or abandoned a repair after 'elective upgrade'.  They are increasingly finding it hard to resell 20, 30 and 40 year old "third hand" electronics.

Correctly diagnosing the problem is the first step to treatment.  Paying for the solution is the second step.

How to pay for the safe and effective recycling of used electronics abandoned at African repair shops - not by Europeans or Americans, but by African consumers who, eventually, decide not to pay for the repair of a 45 year old television set?

First, stop wasting money on environmental malpractice.

2012: InterCon Takes On Basel Action Network

Word came in Friday's E-Scrap News that Intercon Solutions is suing Basel Action Network - for defamation.

E-Stewards asked to Co-Defame (Herbert Block 1950)

BAN's "E-Steward" business model looks to many people like selling insurance against their own defamation campaign.  Whether Intercon Solutions wins, loses, or settles, we should note that they are not alone.  Unfortunately, most of the people being tarred as "primitives", "polluters", "criminals" and "exporters" don't have the wherewithal to sue Basel Action Network.


Eleven months ago, BAN's accusations vs. Intercon Solutions of Chicago Heights domineered the "e-scrap" and "e-waste" news.   My company had traded in a fair amount of "focus materials" with Intercon - CRT Tubes.   We knew that Intercon was passing the CRT Glass Test, which Basel Action Network agreed with us (in 2004) is the #1 indicator of bad behavior.  People called here to warn me that maybe the CRT tubes were going to China.  It was mathematically ridiculous.

Unfortunately, BAN seemed to have forgotten that lesson.   Rather than do Intercon the courtesy of saying that they passed 80/20 rules for focus material, BAN made it all about a single mysterious container which they photographed and tracked from the Intercon yard to a destination in Hong Kong.   BAN focused on whether a literally anecdotal percentage of Intercon's material was sold to - a person of color.  The story was not about what the material was - cell phones for repair?  laptop batteries?  LCDs? Nor about the capability of the person buying it.   It was about whether the containerload originated at Intercon, and what nationality the buyers were.  The only important thing was whether 1% of something was sold to a person in China.