UNITAR Global E-Waste "Monitor" 2024: Better, but still kinda cringy?

I have yet to read more than the Executive Summary and Table of Contents of the new UNEP Global E-Waste Monitor report, but I can already see that it's being mis-reported.  The "hook" is an emergency, that only 22.3% of e-waste is "documented", and the rest (the Executive Summary implies), is presumed to be "improperly" managed or "lost" to the so-called "informal sector".

Readers may remember this blog previously defined "informal sector" as "a white person didn't enter it into a spreadsheet"... in response to the "Criminal Negligence" 2015 Report.

UNITAR (another UN agency) describes the reports findings as follows:

"Meanwhile, less than one quarter (22.3%) of the year’s e-waste mass was documented as having been properly collected and recycled in 2022, leaving US $62 billion worth of recoverable natural resources unaccounted for and increasing pollution risks to communities worldwide. "

The "five fold growth" in "e-waste" is describing worldwide generation, not just wealthy countries.  This raises questions about the measurement of "undocumented" used electronics... but lets list a few obvious premises.

1.  The size of electronics PER CAPITA is declining due to the miniaturization effect.  In 1992 it peaked because we needed a desk phone, an answering machine, a fax machine, a camera, a radio, etc.... all of which now fit inside the smart phone in my front pocket.  

2. The export market, which the previous 2015 UNEP Report described as "primitive", is mostly for reuse.  So if there was less e-waste generated in the past compared to the future, that can only be explained by the continuous reuse of past devices which continue to be reused and maintained in places like Ghana, Nigeria, Angola, etc.  

3. The UNEP reports conflate the end of first consumer use with "waste generated", as if reuse and repair, if not "documented", is in the "ewaste" volume assesssed.  That would mean that if a white person owns a TV for ten years, and it's purchased and reused by an African for another 40 years, that the "waste" is counted twice - the first time it was "generated" and the actual "end of life" of the TV.

Photo of TV Repairman Ibrahim Alhassan in Savelugu, Ghana, who we introduced to author Adam Minter, who wrote about Ibrahim in the seminal reuse non-fiction book "Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale".  Ibrahim was repairing a 1970 Japanese CRT television, or rather improving it by addint a remote control function absent in the original knob-tuned TV.  This TV certainly would have been destroyed by "Big Shred" in Europe decades ago... but hard to describe the African's continuous use and extended life as "primitive"... unless you are a wee bit racially-profilly.

The Privilege of Being Offended by Appropriation

Living in Vermont, with a wife teaching at Middlebury, and three college kids, I am very aware of political correctness, privilege, and offense.  The "victimhood jujitsu", where something you say or hear puts you or someone else off-balance. The passive aggression, finding subliminal intent where none was on the sayer's mind.

Not that I hold the conservative view... just addressing the educational tactic of reverse-labelling.

Worn to my first recycling job interview

PC culture may be a good thing or a bad thing. But political correctness may have unintended consequences when it emboldens a type of anti-bully, a Madame LaFarge, to call out privileged people for oblique intent. Indeed, some of the political right of Brietbart give credit to liberal college shaming to emboldening them. Like in jujitsu, the left shifts its body weight to anticipate the right's weakness, and the right re-leverages its body weight to counter.

Like sloshing in a bathtub, this kind of immature discussion makes a mess.

Insecurity about our inherited history can cause us to project insecurity onto others. It bears a lesson most societies have taught us to resist.

Defending the 20 Percent: LET'S INTEGRATE RECYCLING

American Retroworks Inc. is a USA corporation based in Middlebury, Vermont. Established as a consulting company in 2001, ARI developed one of the first electronics take back and recycling ventures in the USA (Good Point Recycling), which now employs 30 staff. ARI has recycled, or diverted for reuse, over 20M kilos of “e-waste” over the decade plus we have collected in New England.  We create blue collar jobs in Addison County, we train our staff to meet new opportunities, and almost all of the $40M we have brought into the county came not just from out of state, but from big manufacturing companies - OEMs, steel and copper smelters, plastics molders - in other countries.

This blog is about the 20%.  Of people, partners, and product. 

Euro Agbo Porno Photo Journos 3: Credits Making Poverty Porn Placebo in Agbogbloshie!

Video Produced by Sasha Rainbow for RiseRecords and Placebo creates more "Collateral Damage".  

"Life is what you make it" music video, filmed at Accra city dump, uses gasoline fueled fire, children, and recycling images.

Well, well, well... it has been a busy week for Agbogbloshie.  We are looking for a release document for one of the "three musketeers" (Awal, Razak, Yahroo), who featured prominently in a new music video released for Placebo by Rise Records.  Not trying to scare them away, but to get them into their role in the dialogue.  They probably meant well, and are "collateral damage" from BAN propaganda... which they append at the video's final seconds, as if spreading fear for Africans victimization is compensation enough for a day of scrap circus performances.

First, some actual journalism happened the same afternoon as the video was released, and from the same state (Oregon).  Resource Recycling magazine had a thoughtful cover article on our Fair Trade Recycling "carbon offset model" waste trading with Ghana.

Same day, Rise Records (Beaverton, OR) released a film by director "Sasha Rainbow".   The music video for glam-punk-rock rerelease UK group Placebo advertises albums and t-Shirts.  The Song is "Life's What You Make It".

The film opens with the line "dedicated to the workers of Agbogbloshie".  Well, that's nice.  What's fascinating is that Sasha Rainbow uses only a handful of the people there, and the most prominently featured is Awal Muhammed of Savelugu (north of Tamale), who I spent several weeks with in January and February.

Here's Awal in the music video.  I am struggling to know how to feel about this.  His name, at a minimum, should be in the credits.  He's not a "nameless faceless worker of Agbogbloshie".

Here's Awal wearing my company T-Shirt (with Yahroo)

So I was kind of mock-exploiting these "most photographed dudes in Africa".  But I don't know if I paid them as much as Placebo or Sasha Rainbow paid them - or far more.  And I very much want to find out.  Because if Sasha Rainbow and Rise Records did compensate these workers, they should proudly name them (like a check would require) and say so in the credits.  Because Bellini, McElvaney, and other Euro Agbo Porno Photo Journos did not.  None of us assumes the scrappers are given more than a thank you, and if that's the case here, the Glam Rockers need to find out, and correct that.  If I see these people in a video that's making money, I want to read that the dudes were paid a fair crew wage.  The ironically titled video "Still Not Sponsored" is perhaps the grossest, most disturbing example, with smarmy ridiculing voice over by Mike Anane, a guy these scrappers detest.

Defending Geeks of Color In Vacuum of Nuance

The April Fools blog on Saturday returned to familiar ground.  I'm a little uncomfortable with one of the jokes, which I softened in a later edit.  The GPS Not In 88 Electronic Recycler acronym was cringeworthy.

But in backing away, I'm also caving in to the neutering of nuance by political correctness.  You see, by nature of my privilege, many say I cannot joke about certain things.  Such as the white privilege of those who would criminalize used appliance repair.

Mark Twain's use of the n-word in Huckleberry Finn is still "controversial", at least among people whose IQs are either much higher or much lower than mine.

Essentially, the majority of human beings agree with me and not those who have claimed the mantle of "Steward".  But the majority does not have the e-waste megaphone.

Ghana Fair Trade Recycling Album

The strict European definitions that place repair and reuse under "waste management" regulators was a reaction to a false statistic, which was perhaps created innocently but was funded with millions of dollars of Planned Obsolescence, Anti-Gray-Market, and Big Shred money.  An obscene amount of money as compared with the number of dollars that ever went to the families of people whose photos among waste were used to pass the legislation and garner those donations.