- Fly and Buy: A trip to inspect used electronics, to be purchased for export. The goal of the buyer is to make sure the load is at least 85% working and repairable after damage in shipping and elective upgrades. See also "waste tourist".
- Fly and Lie: A trip to inspect the exported electronics in the country which received them. The goal is to support a political agenda. The "waste tourist" typically films only the 15% which was not reused, or films end-of-life product (generated on continent), emphasizing the most primitive aspects of the informal sector.
There is a double standard for "waste tourists"... people who fly over oceans to witness used electronics. The waste tourists flying from North to South are called "watchdogs". Those who fly from South to North are called "criminals". People lose their life savings or go to jail based on how their trip is profiled.
When the WATCHDOG tourists fly to Africa, the working units aren't on the ground - they are in doctors offices, internet cafes, dormitories. Admittedly, it's difficult to find the good-goods all in one place (though FIXERS manages to interview the repairpeople). But the watchdog tourists take lots of film of the residue. I felt like going ballistic when I previewed Fedele's E-Wasteland last week, as it used the 200,000 tons of import statistic from the 2011 UNEP studies, but seemed to ignore the rest of the UNEP study - the part that said 170,000 tons of it was reused and repaired, and most of the material at Agbogbloshie was generated by Africans after a decade of use.
We accept as normal in the West that 11% of brand new electronics sold are returned to the store as non-functional. But when 15% of used goods brought to Africa fail, it means African businessmen are "criminals". The math perplexes environmentalists, who can't seem to figure out that 85% of the imports are in doctors offices, internet cafes, and universities.
To the African businesspeople, this is all about numbers. Dollars, statistics, shipping costs, repair costs, distribution, and profit. The higher the resale value, the greater the financial return. These are not do-gooders, nor are they greedy, not any more than Bruce Springsteen is "greedy" for charging money for his concert in Dublin last week. They have payrolls, they have family, they have risks, and no guarantee of rewards.
The African business people fly-and-buy to inspect product before they pay $10 each and another $10 to ship them. Without them, the percentage of junk in loads could be much, much higher.
This is not about some unscrupulous white "ewaste" recycler filling a boat and finding a beach in Africa to dump on. Those "criminals" have never been found, because they don't exist.
Interpol labels the African Fly-and-Buy "Waste Tourists" (Daily Telegraph, 2009) "criminals". Journalists and watchdogs, like Greenpeace, Basel Action Network, NRDC, CBS 60 Minutes, and Europol also fly to see the goods, after they are received. These are also "white waste tourists". They make their livings denigrating the African businessman's trade. But unlike the African "waste tourist", all they have invested is their plane ticket - or in the case of Greenpeace a sabotaged (to be unrepairable) television and a GPS tracking device (which they got back).
"Man held after tonnes of illegal e-waste are exported to Africa'Scavenger children' at risk from toxic fumes produced by broken equipment"
- The Independent headline, November 2009
