Robin Ingenthron Academia.Edu - Two decades of building a case in favor of Trade between Global Geeks

The blog has almost as many unfinished and unpublished posts in 2021 than posts that made it online. Twitter and Facebook and Linkedin force me to make the points more succinctly, and that can be good if the subject is retreading of past fair trade recycling posts. 

Given no word limit, I find myself tiptoeing up to the edge of obfuscation. But at the same time, there are a few people out there still who appreciate the intellectual bedrock of Right To Repair, Right to Own, Right to Recycle, and the tactics of Action Networks and Big Corporations.

 To make sure everyone can find copies of articles I've published, or authors and researchers who've done research on projects of mine at Fair Trade Recycling - Here are some of the highlights of 20+ years of research, and the untangling of a charitable industrial complex that doled out heaps of collateral damage on the E-Waste Hoax. 

 https://independent.academia.edu/RobinIngenthron 

Note that the oldest one is a paper I had to hand-write on completion of my 1983 semester at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland (couldn't fit a typewriter in my backpack). I'd gone to research the Infant Formula controversy and the USA's refusal to participate in a motion by the UN General Assembly to restrict the trade of infant formula to developing nations (LDCs). 

At Carleton College I worked to re-instate the Nestle Boycott by circulating petitions, and was pretty confident that I'd discover the US was wrong. But after deep interviews with Americans at World Health Organization, the leaders of the INFACT* 'Infant Formula Action" group, and Geoffrey Fookes (VP of Nestle) I got a taste of the "career path" of activism. I could not see any way the boycott could have traction without targeting Nestle, the most wealthy and conservative and best-practices-oriented manufacturer. And I didn't see how the NGO could grow and build on a micro-issue.

"WHO's in charge?" was a pretty decent pun summing up the problems I saw with UN and World Health Organization acting as pharmacists to police sales of baby food.  The real solution was right under my nose 2 years later, when I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroun, Africa.

(*or was it INFORM? One was the USA counterpart)

Poison Apples 2: Profiting from Ewaste Cures

Things that seemed very important to write about 6 years ago (about things like desktop CRT monitor remanufacturing in Asia, and California SB20) now seem less vital.  But while public discussion of the topics in this blog has quieted, and some wins (like Mr. "Fishing as a Boy" Anane being actively edited out of certain documentaries) institutionalized, individual cases of racial profiling of the emerging market's tech sector continue. I receive a lot of thank yous "under the table".

What I have learned over the 11 years of writing this blog is that being passionate about environmentalism is like being passionate about cures for human sickness and disease. It is a hot topic until the disease is cured, but that different populations struggle with different levels of risk.

And the importance of being green is not passeé.  The theme is to improve environmental health the way we improved human health. Sometimes, that means standing up to the liar wearing the doctor's white coat, promising to end suffering by selling a cure they've barely tested....

E-Waste Policy looks a great deal, through the lens of history, like 1960s infant formula sales.  My mom recently recalled that when she was breastfeeding me at the hospital in Harrison Arkansas in 1962, a nurse in the room asked her, "What are you trying to prove?"  Mom was only 19... but thank god she could see past the nurse's labcoat.

360 Degree Racism: The Privileged Wage Collateral Damage on Emerging "E-Waste" Markets

Do rich people have more leverage and 'unfair' advantage in a marketplace?  Absolutely.  No one denies that in a used car transaction that the wealthy owner of the car doesn't have the same need to make the sale, and the poor person - who needs an affordable car to get to work - has more to lose if the sale doesn't happen.  The wealthy have the power and privilege.

That said, the stupidest and most ignorant conclusion is that poor people should be put in a different marketplace than rich people.  That they shouldn't trade together.  Years ago, an NGO leader told me that poor people should repair poor peoples stuff, and rich people should repair rich peoples stuff... that identity should define the legality of the transactions.

It is a kind of stupid that could only occur in a marketplace contaminated by "identity politics".  Instead of talking about the transaction, and what's in the best interest of the free market participants, we are defining them as representatives of social groups.  In a market where some collective guilt or social liability has been whipped into a froth such that the rich person feels liability or exposure to the idea that they have exploited the poor person in a transaction, and therefore choose to shred the car rather than allow anyone to say they sold it in a transaction, to a poor person, in a marketplace where they held the upper hand.

#360DegreeRacism is the spawn of identity politics.

Used Chevy in Poorest Rural Mexico

DEBUT - Fair Trade Recycling Offset - Recycled Content Jewelry from Computer Scrap

[10/6/2016]  Just a little celebration.  We just made our first "Fair Trade Recycling Offset" transaction.

We sold about $10,000 worth of computers to Chendiba Enterprises, who have a Vermont based tech testing all the displays and PCs at our plant before he buys them for export.  He's our "Joe Benson".

Normally, we take a deposit of 80% when the computers leave Vermont ($8,000 say), and wait for the computers to be received and reconciled in Ghana.  Then the next containerload is $10,000 - $2000 for the reconciled shipment #1, and another 80% / $8k deposit for shipment #1.

This week, we told our Ghana buyer to take $100 out of the $2,000 reconciliation and give it to the father of one of the Chendiba Techs (who I met and filmed in 2015).  He is a retired high school teacher who kept his own father's tradition of small scale metal smelting.  He made our Fair Trade Recycling bracelets in 2015.

Save The American Children! Shocking Expose on USA's Car Repair Market

Just sayin'...



The point is obviously that:

1. Abandoned or slow moving "waste" is more persistent and easily photographed
2. Manufactured goods kept for part sales is different from shredding, different business
3. Sometimes business owners die or get in trouble or screw up
4. Outliers in an industry should not be used by photojournalists to racially profile geographies
5. No one knows, really, what's going on without data journalism.

Hopefully Germans don't see this video and decide to boycott car sales to Florida.  Fortunately, there are no brown children close up photos to trigger an NGO fundraising campaign.

Young Indonesian Covers "Hurricane" / Leslie T. Chang's Factory Girls

"Peculiarly self-obsessed... inaccurate and disrespectful"   

- See Leslie T. Chang's TED Talk.

Windyasari Septriani of Indonesia can learn Bob Dylan's song Hurricane, and can share it with us, because she is part of the 3B3K... 3 Billion People who live in countries earning, plus or minus, $3K per year.  You know, the fastest growing segment of internet users.

Environmental Malpractice Part 4: Poverty Porn

Born in:   Mexico, Mexico, USA, Palestine, USA, Taiwan, USA, Malaysia

So at our meeting in Vegas, Jim Puckett made the case that the world will be better if we all obey "international law", and that defamation of technicians, and closure of sustainable repair and reuse factories, is acceptable "collateral damage".  Jim presents himself, again and again, as an authority on Basel Convention.

The use of international treaties to simultaneously protect the 6 billion people in "non-OECD" nations from ... bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...  and the same time generate millions of well-intentioned dollars for a Seattle non-profit... This is not BAN.org's invention.  Poverty Porn has been around for decades.

Since my days studying international development at Carleton College, and as both a volunteer and employee (cross-culture trainer) for Peace Corps Africa, we've been aware of the "poster child" syndrome.  Here's a recent editorial on "Poverty Porn" by Nathaniel Whittemore at Co.Exist  (and here's a film from an admittedly donation-based organization in Africa, MamaHope.org, which does at least give hope for a different message).

The Hollywood and not-for-profit-Guilt-Industrial-Complex are really nice people to hang around with, as Jim and Mike both were in Vegas.  They are nicer people than I am.   Calling them accidental racists or ayatollahs of #ewaste was a decent into frustration.    If we are to turn them around, we need to first get their attention (which I've done) but then to find an alternative to the touchy word "racism".

A Modest Proposal Made Every Day for "Export Bans"

Memorial Day: Fear and Greed Part 1

The more I try to crystallize the issue in this blog, the more it is about trade and exchange between rich and poor.  The exchange is a value, and the fear of exploitation is a value.  Some make their value in the margins of exchanges they make, others make their money through their authority over those transactions.

Whether we draw two big circles on a map and call them "OECD and non-OECD", or seven circles for continents, or 193 nations, or circles which show cities and peasants in those countries, or draw lines within a city between the high property values and the ghettos, it's ultimately about the transfer of wealth and value.   When a rich man employs a poor man, or a poor man buys something from a rich person, or a daughter marries across an economic line, opinions and suspicions sharpen.

Is trade between wealthy and poor exploitation, or opportunity?  Who is the authority or referee?

Jim Puckett says in his interviews in CBS 60 Minutes and Frontline that the deck is stacked against the poor in any exchange.  The economic have-nots will be abused and worse off due to the trade of second hand goods.  This line of thinking has some friendly listeners in the "environmental justice" arena, and the anti-globalization movement of Seattle.

I was a critic of how the USA's most toxic industry - hard rock non-ferrous mining - moved to rain forests where no one complains about the cyanide, mercury, and other toxic runoff.  Those concerns brought me into the recycling field, in fact.  And here I am in a battle of wits with a fellow environmentalist over how our raw material policy should play out worldwide.

My concerns about hard rock mining, however, were never pinned on a false hope of economic segregation.  Boycotting and segregating people we are uncomfortable or uncertain about has led to many "trail of tears", and many burned bridges.  Doing the right thing means doing something, but it isn't to throw a garbage can through the collective window of the recycling industry.  Fair trade makes more sense, and is not something Basel Action Network should try to make people afraid of.

Tech, Toxics, and Ju-Ju:  Leverage fear, create authority

In his editorial response to my first widely published column, "We Shouldn't Have to Make that Choice" (reprinted in E-Scrap in 2009), Jim Puckett said that he didn't think Fair Trade meant "poisoning people".   Toxics is a scare word.  Jim was clearly trying to make people afraid of the economic exchange.   He tells people that replacing or upgrading a part is hazardous, toxic, polluting.  He knows he's wrong, he just doesn't recognize why he's doing it. It is not, as he claimed, about a "loophole" of reuse.  If it's resolved, his authority diminishes, and he's not ready to retire.

Create concern, especially visceral concern (photos of children).  Promote yourself as an authority to reduce this concern. Sell certification.   Profit!

You do not create "environmental justice" by creating a vacuum or boycott of trade.  Justice is, by definition, a judgement call, a negotiation, and a settlement.   You do not stop exploitation by labeling people and segregating them.  

Boycott E-Stewards Recyclers?

Here's an excerpt from the latest press release from Basel Action Network, which has announced that R2 (Responsible Recycler Certification) is accepted by E-Stewards, but not sufficient:

"BAN created the e-Stewards Standard after the R2 Standard failed to prohibit exports of hazardous electronic waste to developing countries"

Jim Puckett, BAN, sells E-Steward Certification, 

receives % of gross from E-Steward Companies

"After the R2 Standard FAILED"?  E-Stewards rolled out before R2 ever went to press.  R2 has not even been accused of anything specific except not being the choice of BAN, a choice BAN made before R2 went to print.   Now even "not being the choice of BAN" is in question, as BAN's announcement was that it was adapting R2 standards...

In any case, the studies have been released... even non-certified exports to Africa were 85% reused.  Just how bad could R2 certification be?

For 10 years, the non-profit NGO BAN said that 80% of the goods exported to Africa were e-waste burned in terrible conditions... the conditions prior to either R2 or E-Stewards Standards.  They showed us pictures of the kids in the dump, working on "allegedly" imported computer junk.  They said that the contract refurbishing (white box re-manufacturing) factories were "poisoning people" and "illegal"...

Now, seems it ain't so.

Korea on Korea E-Waste Trade

Tip of the hat to Adam Minter, who's burrowed in to complete his "scrap book".

I'm not really sure what to make of this story in Mainichi Daily News, which is about the arrest of a South Korean for selling used PCs to North Korea.  But what is clear is what it is not about.

• It's not about the South Korean exploiting North Korea's poverty.
• It's not about racial guilt.
• There's no discussion of "OECD" South Korea trading with North Korea.
• There's no discussion of whether the personal computers were "fully functional", or "tested working", or ewaste.
• No one speaks about toxics, hard drive information, or other ju-ju words which elevate the e-waste crisis.

Silence!

It's not about a dictator calling the imports e-waste.  Dictators normally want to restrict the sale and distribution of cell phones, display devices, and internet.  In places like Pakistan, people call computer assets commodities, they are something people bid, something people want.  Labelling them "waste" leads to an SOPA-like uproar (Daily Times, April 2010 ‘No ban on import of used computers’).

In this case, the dictatorship is silent about the exchange of goods.

The outcry is from the nations who don't want North Koreans to be using the internet.

I don't know enough about this particular set of computers, who sold it, who bought it, or how they'd be used.  Maybe for a weapons system, maybe to edit porn.  Maybe to translate John Lennon songs...