3 Recycling Films: "Where" is E-waste Exploitation?

TV at dump in Ghana.  Imported.. but when?

I'm postponing a post I'm writing about my ten year anniversary at Good Point (in January 2002 I bought my first asset, a used truck), to say a bit more about the Scrap Boys Ghana Agbogbloshie film reposted yesterday.


Dr. Josh Lepawsky of Memorial University in Newfoundland sent me this link to film of recycling in Detroit.  It appears in NY Times as a short, "Dismantling Detroit", and the young men interviewed serve as kind of a comparison to the "Scrap Boys" in Agbogbloshie.


Josh and his grad student Chris McNabb came down to visit our "fair trade recycling" pilot recycling plant in Mexico two weeks ago (Third Video:  PBS on Las Chicas Bravas at Retroworks de Mexico).  Josh has written about the theory he's studying, The Pollution Haven Hypothesis, which is that avoided disposal costs explain geographic displacement of PCs. 


The cost of disposing the junk (or surplus) product here in the OECD represents a value that could partially offset the cost of geographic displacement.  The environmental and social benefit of OECD's higher standards may be assumed lost, or be a cost to the recipient.   But what was good about the item, which caused African entrepreneurs to pay for its relocation?  Is this also about externalizing value, or only costs?

• What's the cost (or value) of properly recycling it in the new location?
• What's the retained value after pollution haven is debited... i.e. what is the raw material and reuse haven value?

The "value" of a labor hour in Ghana - about $1.68 - alone creates an economic disincentive to do the work for USA minimum wage.  But accounting for all the "unfair" and "pollution haven" values, are we left with a symptom or a cause?  What is the value added?  Where's the baby, and who is holding the bathwater?

Below I make my case for the "Reuse Haven" hypothesis.   Both depressing films focus on symptoms.   If we stop world trade, will we make the symptoms go away?  What other effects would that cause?  Can the third film - on Retroworks de Mexico - offer a compromise?