E-Waste Made Simple. Logo Extortion

"It's as if recoiling from images of poverty is becoming equated with compassion."


That quote was one of my most powerful insights in 2011, crystalized after reading the December Bloomberg piece on fairtrade cotton and Victoria's Secret.  It's a powerful human impulse to harness, and Bloomberg reporter  Cam Newton (not the NFL player) is not the only "parasite of the poor".  Another report came out yesterday from our friends at BAN, loaded with allegation, evidence, and a solution for your e-waste angst, dissonance, panic, unease, discomfort, and fear.  The witch doctor in Seattle has a Copyrighted Logo cure for your toxic juju.


It's the same parasitic business model, harnessing our cognitive risk, unease, and good intentions (or fear of blackmail via public watchdog "outing") without sharing a dime with the poor people used in the process.  Read BAN.org's press release / email. Then look for evidence to support their allegation. 

But what most people don’t know is that most companies that call themselves electronics recyclers are not really recyclers at all.  They are global e-waste dumpers. The vast majority of companies and organizations touting themselves as environmentally friendly “recyclers” are just selling this highly toxic scrap to brokers, who then ship to developing countries in African and Asia where all this waste is broken down in highly dangerous and destructive ways, creating what 60 Minutes calls “the most toxic places on earth” (seewww.ban.org/photogallery).

Most people, Most recyclers,  Most Toxic Place.  Vast Majority...  Hyperbole accusations are a bad sign. The NGO doesn't know what it is talking about, and is making "facts" up as it goes along.  Providing false evidence is the first signal that someone is either mistaken or has an angle.

The Blind Mis-Leading the Blind

Basel Action Network attacks ISRI, both in a press release today, and last week in E-Scrap News.  Quote from BAN on the ISRI Data presentation:

“The ISRI-sponsored report doesn’t pass the smell test,” says Jim Puckett, BAN's Executive Director.  “Basic analysis reveals it to be even worse than a case of garbage in, garbage out.  ISRI puts its fingers on the scale of even the flawed data. The resulting conclusions are both inaccurate and irresponsible.”

BAN.org, once again, makes "profit and payment" the villains.  If ISRI is for-profit, and BAN is not-for-profit, and neither has good data, should we trust BAN or ISRI?  If Ghana Tech is making money selling working display units to internet cafes and hospitals, how can we trust him?  Smash the value and refuse to export smashed goods, BAN says, is the only way to be safe.  E-Stewards say "I know my goods should not be exported - not because I tested them, but because I've already shredded them."  

But, how do they know Africa Geek's exports are bad?  What does my decision to shred material I don't test say about his decision to pay money to buy, pack, ship, import, and resell?

This is getting really old.   The Ghana Report, along with the ASU study, shows that payment for used electronics is one of the strongest indicators of value.   WR3A interviews with importers show BAN is making a killing on a self-fulfilling prophecy.   Discourage exports among e-stewards, and the buyers have fewer choices of supplier.  Good data is hard to see in dark alleys.

BAN has created the Al Capone, and now lines its coffers with "non-transparency" attacks.  Do I agree with some of BAN's statements about ISRI/IDC methodology?

When BAN has spent a decade making up data from whole cloth, a completely FALSE claim of 80% primitive recycling, any decent data moves the discussion forward.   I score this one for ISRI.  Despite the flaws in the study, BAN is wearing nothing.   BAN is completely naked.  And real people in Indonesi are hungry tonight because BAN's self-serving fatwah.  Declare geeks primitive, poison the well, tell people that ISRI members are poisoning the children.

Instead of data, the press release reminds us that journailsts saw dumping grounds.  Been there, discussed that.  Hospitals have morgues.   The alternative to recycling is mining, more poison than the worst recycling.  The dumping grounds are generated by the nations self-generated e-waste, and by 10-30% residue in imports.  Both those problems are better resolved by fair trade recycling than by shredding working product.

Shame on you Basel Action Network.  All you ever do is attack, you never apologize for a false accusation, despite pictures and proof of your lynching and shredding.    ISRI will not be the first or the last data to show that "recycling is good".  If BAN wants to make them the enemy of the Perfect, they are leading environmentalists into a long, dark, back-alley of non-transparency and prohibition, which of course has been demonstrated to work as well as did the bans on interracial marriage, abortion, alcohol and marijuana.

Accusation is easier than rebuttal

Sure, ISRI's data is flawed.  If you cannot come up with alternative data, keep your press release to yourself.  That is not a rebuttal.  Come on, tell people why the Boston Globe March 2010 article now has BRACKETS [ ] inside quotation marks.   Why does the online article no longer say "primitive wire burning" in describing the former contract manufacturing factory which reused, refurbished, and put in glass washing?  Lynching liars.  Mel Brooks "Inquisition" musical may be remade some day for the Ayatollah of e-Waste (and no, I'm not putting in a youtube clip here... but trust me, it's sadly funny).

ISRI's report provides a service by providing data.  BAN has provided only racist photos that repeatedly, as nauseum, show poor children when they KNOW for a FACT that they have attacked th Samsung Corning glass-to-glass operation in Klang Malaysia and the warranty-OEM-manufacturer-takeback operations in Indonesia, and that a major study has shown their false, misleading, fictious statements about exports to Ghana to be laughable racist bullshit.   Come on now, BAN... where's YOUR data?   Methinks thy press release doth protest too much.

Below are some observations about BAN's "rebuttal" to the IDC Report.