The Noble Informal

Today's blog is just a placeholder for another I've been working on for a few days. 

The topic is my invitation to present to a group of African Environmentalists on the Topic of E-Waste Management in Africa. 

Youth in E-Waste and Greentech Summit

The paper introducing the conference quotes Global Transboundary E-Waste Flows Monitor as follows:

"According to the Global Transboundary E-waste Flows Monitor 2022, Africa generates over 2.3 million metric tons of e-waste annually, with only 1.2% of this waste being collected and recycled in an environmentally sound manner in an ecologically sound manner. The informal waste management sector handles a substantial amount of e-waste, collecting and recycling the majority through unsafe treatment methods. These practices harm the environment and pose severe health risks to women, children, workers, and fenceline communities. The informal e-waste sector's low-value recovery methods perpetuate poverty and hinder sustainable development."

I have been invited by Agabas Ayudor of Appcyclers, who spent a week at Good Point in Vermont last month learning about how hand disassembly leads to more reuse and repair than grinding and shredding.

If I'm able to present, my title will be The Noble Informal, and will focus on Retroworks de Mexico, which opened in 2007, and which for 13 years operated an e-waste demanufacturing facility in Sonora which was banned from the Tucson Arizona contract it was awarded based on the exact same made-up narrative. The Arizona companies who impugned Las Chicas Bravas as "Primitives" wound up creating the largest hazardous CRT waste pile in America - possibly the largest on earth.  The women who ran Retroworks de Mexico in fact recycled the only CRT glass from Arizona that came from that pile.

Africans presenting the dystopian rumors about Africa Tech Sector to young Africans is something that should keep European tax payers up at night.  This is 2022, not 2012, when the lid came off of Basel Action Network's 80% false claims, and the re-arrest of Joseph "Hurricane" Benson in the UK was issued based upon that false, faked, statistic.

I don't want to be pidgeonholed into writing about the same thing, but WHO IN ACADEMIA IS HOLDING GLOBAL TRANSBOUNDARY E-WASTE FLOWS MONITOR accountable for this propaganda?  

Farwell Chicas Bravas: How Bureaucracies, Virus and Bias Sunk a CRT Glass Solution

In My Opinion: Published in E-Scrap News

Photos below, article in link above.

Bombshell Interview with Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network - leaked!

Let's start the 2019 Blog off with a BANG.

I have gotten a copy of the ~10 minute interview Jim Puckett did with a documentary filmmaker from Spain, on the subject of Agbogbloshie, Ghana. At the end of the video, Jim evidently didn't like his answers, whips off the mic, and leaves, saying he refused to authorize the use of his video.

He repeatedly used the term "biased questions". As is, is the percentage of bad material imported to Africa 15% or 80%? But my favorite "biased question" is...

"Do you know the name Joe Benson?"

No. That is a biased question....?

????

Someone asks you the name (John Smith, Mary Johnson?) and if you don't know them, is it a "biased question"?

Jim got his wish, and none of his interview made it to the documentary. But I have managed to get a very bad raw copy of it from an online upload site. The clips were uploaded in the USA (en route to Europe), and I have a copy of what the European documentary maker received (but did not use). If anyone is sued, I can testify that I obtained this directly from a third party cameraman hired from Florida, and not from the Europeans.

I will try to get some of this video out this weekend.

Breaking: Raid on Thailand's Largest Used Flat Monitor Reuse/Recycling Operation

Hopefully non-Facebook viewers can see the CarmaFi LIVE from Bright TV in Thailand, I am looking for other hosts (Youtube).


This is fascinating because it's very rare to have 60 minutes of live video of an Asian E-waste recycling and refurbishing facility.  I was aware that Thailand has become the largest buyer of desktop LCDs, and as my company expands its own USA flat TV recycling operation, I confess I was worried this would be our competition.

https://www.facebook.com/BrightTV20/videos/2143410722606242/

Wow. I see things that look really bad. I see things that look really good.  I see modern air separation equipment, and I see Asian women sorting things on the table, and men sorting things on the floor. Lots of green circuit boards. I don't see any smoke or acid (promised by BAN).  I see aluminum heat sinks being sorted for reuse. I see downdraft tables where chips are being pulled and sorted from circuit boards for reuse.  I see 50 tubs with 50 different grades of copper.

The dreaded aluminum heat sink sorting table

Basel Action Network has pronounced judgement, of course. And I have to reserve judgement - even BAN isn't wrong all of the time. But they (BAN) sure do make it hard to see people for what they can do, positively, when they introduce them as "primitives" and "polluters".  I am just watching this video for the first time, and hope to learn what these processes are.  My hunch is that it is environmentally safer than mining, refining, and new manufacturing.  But that could be my own bias.

Bias is not all bad. My pre-disposition is largely framed by my knowledge of the complete history of electronic displays, from blinking-lights to tab cards to VGA, SVGA, digital, etc. I learned most of this from a guy who arrived as a child in Tawain during Mao's takeover of PRC, who wore rice sacks as clothes, but went to engineering school in Taipei... where he developed the first-ever display of Chinese characters on a CRT electron gun screen.

Marketing Confirmation Bias for E-Waste

Here's the simple thing about electronics recycling.  If you are an electronics recycler, which would you rather unload into your building today?

1)  Two trailers of gently used rich people stuff (high repair and reuse value)
2)  One trailer of gently used rich people stuff, and one trailer of obsolete "ewaste"
3)  Two trailers of obsolete "ewaste"?

Does the answer to this question depend on your race, your language, or your identity?  Or is it a universal obvious fact that we prefer items of more value?

No tech or geek I know cares about the "nationality" of a device.  A Chinese geek will prefer a P4 to a P2.  An African geek, working diligently on repairing a P3 for hours, will quickly abandon his invested time if a newer laptop is set on the desk.   Everyone prefers gently used rich people stuff.

If this is boring and obvious, then why is 100% of the dialog about banning poor people from importing rich peoples stuff?  Why are the African e-waste PACE project assuming "no imports"?

Dictators and Planned Obsolescence.

It's normal that BAN has a confirmation bias about the plight of poor kids who have toxics in their blood.  Even if the toxics from leaded gasoline or gold mining accounts for far more poisoning, any poisoning of any child seems unacceptable.  And if something is completely unacceptable, we will have a confirmation bias (ban exports) towards anything that appears to move the other direction.  They see the import glass as 20% empty.

But those of us who have lived in the developing world and have friends there see that geekdom is the opposite of the "resource curse", and that the jobs creasted overseas by the trailerloads of gently used rich people stuff are far better for Africans than other jobs available.  So our bias is that the import glass is 80% full.

I'm as guilty of confirmation bias as any human, I'm going to get a high from UNEP studies which confirm my 2005 hypothesis.   But I have no source of funding to promote my bias.

BAN got another rich company, Sims, to join their E-Steward campaign.   The origin is California, where counties were disqualifying Sims bids, and in particular, California Universities... which are the biggest source of trailerloads of gently used rich people tech there are.

Running rich people tech through a shredder means that the African and Asian and South American e-waste recyclers will get more trailers of obsolete junk, low profit material, as a percentage.  We have demonstrated in Retroworks de Mexico that they are able to do that work, that it's possible to do by hand.  But if they can do it for the domestic junk, why can't they do it for the 20% of bad stuff in the export trailer?  If they can buy tested working, and then properly recycle the unit 5 years later when it stops working, why can't they properly recycle it if they cannot repair it, and keep the money - the big money - they would make on it if they can?

Banning exports of used electronics is a marketing campaign which touches on the basest biases that Europeans and Americans have.   Finding a small piece of electronics, upgraded from a working unit or replaced from a unit sent for repair, is an obvious example of confirmation bias.  If you have set up an E-Stewards program based on no exports, or you've built a shredder to manage California material, or you are selling brand new product and don't want "market cannibalization" competition with your own used product, or you are a dictator who doesn't want tweets and youtube to be widely accessible, then you can all agree, can't you, that the tiny capacitor replaced by a geek of color makes the entire trailerload illegal waste?

And you can pool your resources to market over and over again, pictures of dirty, poor, sad children... whose parents will unload two trailerloads of material today at their African e-waste processing plant.