Recent E-Waste News Predicted by Good Point Ideas Blog

News headlines travel faster these days through my @WR3A Twitter account and LinkedIn. As compared to the blog, those social media venues compete better for shorter attention spans (including yours truly).

The beat goes on.

That said, it's worth it to link today's news to the paradigms long established in the blog.

For example, former E-Stewards Executive Director has retired rather fitfully, and gone on record that both the R2 and E-Stewards Certifications are flawed... flawed in a way that this blog described a decade ago as follows - They don't know what they are talking about and are making it up as they go along.

Akers told me he was somewhat censored by Resource Recycling editors who are trained to flinch by angry outbursts from Jim "A Place Called Away" Puckett. He filled some gems in by email, but the Op-Ed itself is damning enough.

In My Opinion: Does today’s industry need e-Stewards or R2?

I’ve looked at the IRS 990 filings for both Basel Action Network (BAN), the owner of the e-Stewards standard, and Sustainable Electronics Recycling International (SERI), the owner of R2. The most recent filings publicly available online for both organizations cover 2019.

BAN’s filing shows gross revenue of $838,358 with total expenses of $817,088 for a net gain of $21,270 (the year prior, BAN had a net loss of $77,785). The organization reported only $83,351 in grant revenue, meaning the bulk of the revenue is from e-Stewards. The executive director was paid $133,741. Spending on travel totaled $39,234 and spending for advertising was $7,514. Another $314,701 was spent on other salaries.

The SERI filing shows gross revenue at $1,746,118, salaries of $508,775 and a net revenue of $742,097. The executive director was paid $159,650. Certification fees brought in $1,689,774 in revenue.

Both filings raise some questions. For BAN: Is this program sustainable? What happens to my e-Stewards certification if BAN folds? BAN is mostly a one-man show. What happens if that individual retires or becomes ill? Is there a business-continuation plan to protect my investment in an e-Stewards certification? Was any money spent on advertising to help drive business to e-Stewards or just to recruit more companies into the certification pipeline?

For SERI, the main question is: Is any of its revenue spent to help drive business to R2 recyclers?...

The main question really is: How much of those membership fees are being spent to aid the certified recyclers in the marketplace?

From looking at the 990 filings, the answer is not much.

Pouty Puckett has yet to respond in public to Akers cards on the table, though SERI's Corey Dehmey tried to direct us away from the man behind the curtain, and back to the Wizard of Obfuscation with his response last week.

E-Stewards Webinar on SEERA #ewaste legislation today. 8 Questions for 3 Privileged Boomers

Three experts - Jim Puckett, Bob Houghton, and Niel Peters-Michaud are three Boomer White Guy Experts who will tell us all why people should be arrested if they sell used electronics to a willing buyer from Emerging Markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. 

Most of those people who sell there are part of the diaspora - expatriate Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans (like Joseph "Hurricane" Benson). Nobody like that is represented on this panel of experts.

Here are some questions in advance:

Last Chance to Register: ANNOUNCING a new E-STEWARDS WEBINAR

1) What is the average years of use of new devices sold to ("rich nation") OECD?

2) What is the average years of use of new devices sold to ("poor nation") non-OECD?

3) What is the average years of use of used devices in OECD?

4) What is the average years of use of used devices in the non-OECD?

In the not-so distant past, Jim Puckett and Bob Houghton both claimed that 80% of exports of used devices (#4) to Emerging Markets was waste.  After every single study showed 1) that's not economically even possible, and 2) no sample comes remotely similar to Jim's claim, and 3) Jim's source for Agbogbloshie (Mike "Fishing as a Boy" Anane) was making everything up or citing Jim.

Confronted in 2013 with the Big Lie about 80% of E-Waste, Jim changed his answer to "no one knows, but it is illegal".

So a few more questions:

Revenge of the Certification - SERI, E-Stewards Make Threats

As a former regulator, I know better than to let a regulated party "get my goat" and draw me into a pissing match. While I had the power of "you can't fight city hall", the regulated party merely has to create the "appearance of impropriety", not prove impropriety itself.

I've been glared at and - in the case of E-Stewards - directly threatened. "Stop saying bad stuff about us. I don't want to have to go after you." Promise, that was said.

Garrison and Olymbec's CRT Glass Mess 1: Throwing the Book at Closed Loop

******

There's a CRT glass CERCLA lawsuit claim against 60 or so companies who chose not to pay demands by the landlord for Closed Loop Recycling and Recovery in Columbus, Ohio.

I informally consulted for OEMs on David Cauchi's CLRR processing operation from 2010, all the way until 2016. My company was one of the first to cease deliveries, before speculation occurred.  "No good deed goes unpunished," as the saying goes. Garrison South Park (GSP] and Olymbec not only named us anyway, but took information I've provided online over the years and introduced it to the court as evidence that my company was deliberately part of a sham to dump CRT glass on them.

Well, well, well... Their position is that we should have known something in 2011, from hundreds of miles away, which they still couldn't figure out in 2015 (when Olymbec leased CLRR a third warehouse), or when they appraised and purchased the original property (2013) while CLRR was operating inside. It's not like multimillion-dollar commercial landlords know anything about CRT recycling?

There are probably enough of these blogs on the subject of CRT recycling since 2007 to pass as a Ph.D thesis.  Here are some important questions for the CLRR, Olymbec, Garrison South Park case.

Where did the (e-Stewards certified) Creative Recycling CRT Glass Go?  
Where did the (e-Stewards certified) 2TRG CRT Glass Go?
Where did (e-Stewards certificed) Kuusakoski get the CRT glass delivered to Columbus?
Who does GSP plan to pay to remove it?
Where will it go next?

How many landlords will have had this on their property, and how many times will recyclers have to settle the costs, before it's over?

Certification and Racketeering: Part 2 The Guardian Deceit

Definition:   RACKETEERS OFFER A DECEITFUL SERVICE TO FIX A PROBLEM THAT OTHERWISE WOULDN'T EXIST.

"We don't want to have to go after you." - JP to yours truly during California Compromise negotiations in 2010.

"I'm not hiding anything, and don't think much of your threats" - My response.

Basel Action Network "goes after" people through the press. This week, The Guardian's environmental desk proves just how easy that is.  Sandra Laville's headline "UK worst offender in Europe for electronic waste exports - report" diligently puts out the hit, failing to interview a single African or Asian technician or importer.

Free Joe "Hurricane" Benson, much?

Mistaking Africa's Tech Sector (importers) for Africa's Scrap Sector (city wheelbarrow scrap collectors) is like mistaking a surgeon for a janitor because he's black.  The only proof BAN provides is a photo of a janitor.  

There are several other really really simple things to find on the internet which should have given The Guardian's editors pause. I'll tick them off briefly, but stick to the point. BAN has created a problem that wouldn't otherwise exist (false reporting, sabotaged equipment, fake statistics) for the purpose of generating millions of dollars from BAN E-Stewards. BAN not only threatens companies that don't pay them, but makes examples out of those of us who defend the Geeks of Color. It is the valedictorians in the Tech Sector who suffer the worst consequences of BAN's sabotage.

BAN doesn't just sabotage their equipment. It sabotages their reputation, and the reputation of anyone with the courage to trade with them, rather than boycott them. (In Part III, we'll look at who finances this sabotage).

10 Years Of Good Point Recycling Blogs: What's Been Learned?

Ten years ago, most of the mainstream press in Europe and the USA had accepted the cartoon thesis that if electronic waste is expensive to recycle, that shipments of used electronics to Asia, Africa and South America were to avoid those expenses. At least, 80% of the time.

We took that on here, before anyone else would touch the controversy with a 10 meter pole. Here's a retrospective on what was, and still is, relevant in the Good Point Recycling Blog.

When poor people are paying for something (including transportation), it is not "because" the rich are willing to ship it.

We demonstrated that with the "Big Secret Factories" and 60 Wasted Minutes blogs. The sea containers of CRT monitors headed for Asia were never, ever full of large CRT televisions, even though large CRT TVs had more copper and costed more to recycle. In fact, the purchase orders did even accept Sony Trinitron 17" desktop monitors or screen-burned desktop CRTs or pre-VGA.  When someone is paying you $10 each for something specific, and refusing to accept other similar CRTs even if you pay them, it probably has nothing to do with (ahem) "rice paddies".

Brad Collis [CC BY 2.0]

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.

CryptoCurrencyBall: Tinkerer's Blessing Moneyball Takes on E-Waste

The previous post basically took MIT SustainAble City Labs and E-Stewards to task for the ill-conceived GPS tracking study that succeeded, mostly, in elevating negative stereotypes about both scrappers and tech sector workers in emerging markets. 

Basel Action Network is trying to monetize tracking of unwitting, unwilling subjects.  I just hope MIT will eventually do the right thing and apologize for its role in using undergraduate students to place tracked devices, disguised as repairable (and in some cases WERE repaired), and associating legitimate overseas technicians with "rice paddies" and "shantytowns".

Now for the positive, forward looking alternative, the Fair Trade Recycling vision.

"Your goal shouldn't be to buy players. Your goal should be to buy wins... I believe there is a championship team that we can afford, because everyone else undervalues them." Peter Brand, Moneyball

We are working to fly 2 of the brightest LED/LCD/Plasma display techincians I have met in Ghana over the past 4 years to Middlebury, Vermont, to train and interract with Good Point Recycling staff. We sent 2 student interns to work with one of those technicians under the Fair Trade Recycling "e-Waste Ambassadors" program last summer (Middlebury College and U of Florida).

We are going to be card counters at the blackjack table...

And here is a paid Fair Trade Recycling Internship post to bring us there (please repost).

I call it CryptoCurrencyBall...

Reversing ER#3: J-School Background Checks on E-Waste - Benson Released, Rowe Fired?

Here's an interesting statistic on "e-waste" (like most, made up on the spot).  Four out of five journalists who contact me beforehand decide not to run the story on "e-waste" at all.

Reporters are initially attracted to the Basel Action Network's press release or photo opportunity (exotic brown child perched on familiar looking old electronics).  That BAN press release has, for 15 years, triggered interest in reporters and college researchers. An easy story to write, as BAN served "facts" up on a platter.

But Jim Puckett is no Upton Sinclair. He wrote about Agbogbloshie in chilling text - before admitting to me he had never been there at all. He had never even read a peer reviewed article.

The "ewastehoax" says junk in cities across the globe is the fault of "sham recyclers"... if only we use a USA recycling company that pays dividends to Jim Puckett, we will quickly clean these places up.

The Ewastehoax promises a moral lesson of "environmental injustice", and triggers three Steven Pinker-esque cognitive biases:

1. Nurture. We actually care about the poor child.
2. Greed. We suspect someone else's actions were driven by it.
3. Fear.  We are afraid of our own liability for our "stuff".

It's an easy recipe.  BAN isn't the only organization to use it. Annie Leonard, Blacksmith Institute, StEP, R2 (SERI), E-Stewards, CBS 60 Minutes, The Guardian, etc. all followed the trail on these instincts.

If you are a good photographer, that is all you need to put some guy like Joseph "Hurricane" Benson of BJ Electronics behind prison bars.  You can be the reporter that made him sell his house, that cost him his business and his retirement.

You are so cool.  You no doubt picked up all kinds of dates interested in your brave reporting.  Did you tell them about Joe Benson, the Nigerian TV repairman who shipped a TV with a GPS tracker to Ghana? Did you describe the satisfaction of Benson going to jail, like Raphael Rowe of BBC's Panorama did?

Oh, wait.  News flash.  Raphael Rowe got fired? (According to this article, "Pushed Out", but there's still some uncertainty as I research this, he's still on BBC 2 local).  And Interpol has pulled the plug on Project Eden.  All since Fair Trade Recycling's 2015 trip to Agbogbloshie, where we saw a city slum near a dump full of tires, cars, and junk appliances - all once owned by Africans, from a thriving city of millions of consumers.  Even the dozens (not thousands) of (adult) orphans there all carry cell phones, and can send photos of where they collected the scrap... at Accra homes and businesses, which had millions of TVs in the mid 1990s.

Benson may have the last laugh on Raphael Rowe. Though he has suffered, journalism students once attracted to "environmental justice" stories are increasingly documenting "environmental malpractice", "friendly fire", and "collateral damage" to Africa's Tech Sector.

Whether or not Raphael Rowe stays on at BBC, he's still know for having been racially profiled.  As will be Joseph "Hurricane" Benson.  As Rowe said in an interview "bitterness never leaves you".

Our Political New Year's Resolution: Ebony and Ivory

It's 6AM and I'm packing the car for another annual cross country road trip from (red state) Arkansas to (blue state) Vermont.  I was hired as a cross cultural trainer for new US Peace Corps volunteers arriving in Cameroon in 1987, and sometimes feel I never stopped.

Can't resist posting my note to the AirBNB host where we stayed in lovely Leslie, Arkansas.  She was the child of a hippie who grew up in the Ozarks and now lives in Seattle.

Finding yourself in liberal Seattle must be like me finding myself in Vermont. Generally I'm very relieved to be away from "ignorant and proud of it" politics here in the southern midwest. But also I find myself very aware of my coastal liberal friends and our own confirmation bias and "profiling" of conservatives, and attributing to 'denial' what may be legitimate skepticism over 'solutions'. Consider yourself a Peace Corps volunteer from a red state.

ebony and ivory stripes (wikipedia chain gang)

Confirmation bias. Profiling.  I'm not immune to it.  None of us can be. But when you walk a mile in another man's shoes - as I've done for a long time with the WEEE export entrepreneurs in emerging markets - you can sit on their jury.  The blindness of NGOs to the studies that show nuance is nothing new.  It's Captain Ahab.  It's Scarlet Letter.  It's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  It's in To Kill a Mockingbird.  It's Huckleberry Finn's crime.  These great works are all about people who start a mission based on justice (like environmental justice) and consider themselves jurists and agents of conscience, but are deafened by their own conclusions.

We need to keep it simple. If I'm skeptical of your trade ban on used electronics as a "solution" (to what? poverty?) that does not make me a "denier". Let's find something else to agree on, a simple message that might appeal to rural and urban and OECD and non-OECD.

Collateral Damage TOC: The Preview of Ewastegate

TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR "COLLATERAL DAMAGE" BLOGS

Many, many posts on this blog have been around the theme of "unintended consequences".  Two decades of attacks by Basel Action Network to save the world's poor from the waste of the rich nations have added up to a lot of environmental injustice.

This series of blogs will try to document the case for "intervention" by Basel Action Network's donors and E-Stewards.  The NGO has lost its way, and is expending more of its firepower on agents of conscience and authors of nuance.

These are in order of scale of importance, but if you are skimming, jump to #7.  I got something new, and if it turns out to be proven, BAN's Board of Directors will need to take action before the feds get involved, and before Jim Puckett starts erasing his emails.

Collateral Damage 1. Modern high tech recycling and refurbishing factories

BAN spokespeople have repeatedly called the best and brightest recyclers and refurbishers "a myth" and have attacked those who represent them as "deniers" and "apologists", and sought amendments to the Basel Convention to make trade with those factories illegal.


Collateral Damage 2. Small scale (Informal) repair and recycling of home generated scrap

BAN has made the "informal sector" a bad word, when the smaller refurbishers are actually the most vulnerable.  Forcing African, Asian and Latin American small scale tech-sector to buy from fewer OECD suppliers creates "back alley" recycling, just as most prohibitions and boycotts do.


Collateral Damage 3.  Reporters and journalists

Reporters and journalists are in a tough spot already, forced to be experts on every environmental and economic and political topic.  Calling themselves a "watchdog", the NGO has gotten extremely false and inflammatory statistics ("80-90% exports are dumped") into USA Today, National Geographic, CNN, BBC, Economist, Al Jazeera, Science Daily, NPR, etc. etc.  The poison circulates from journalist to journalist, diverting attention from real environmental problems (like non-ferrous metal mining).

Collateral Damage 4. Environmental movement

Ditto.  Well meaning young environmentalists respond to the photos of children at dumps with a passionate indignation, not knowing that the devices they insist on destruction would have been properly repaired and reused, or even properly recycled, by the "others" portrayed as sub-adults.  This "accidental racism" will create cynicism.  (I've been urged not to use the word "hoax" out of fear fellow environmentalists will wind up as collateral damage).


Collateral Damage 5. Interpol, EPA, and Enforcement

A massive waste of resources, "Project Eden" found no Eden in Africa.  It found statistics from World Bank that showed no more illegality or fraud in trade of used electronics than any other trade - until the crackdown.  (Make straw hats illegal and straw hat crime increases).

Collateral Damage 6. Economy (CA SB20)

California believed BAN's malarky about CRT dumping in Guiyu (never a destination for CRTs) and cut itself off from a billion dollar per year refurbishing factory market, which BAN told SB20 was "illegal" and "a myth".  The "cancellation clause" created huge piles of CRT glass and robbed California taxpayers while doing nothing at all to improve the environment.

Collateral Damage 7. Basel Action Network Board of Directors, employees, and friends

In this post I intend to reveal new information about the MIT GPS methodology, suspicions about methodology asked about in our 14 page letter to Carlo Ratti, some of which are now proven. But ironically, there is a brand new development I would have missed if I hadn't been forced to go back to it by BAN's false attack on my company and its friends.  It has to do with the releasing of information about the GPS trackers to companies who pay BAN a portion of their income.   

During the period the GPS was sent to Middlebury, my company was in the process of shipping several loads of printer scrap to an E-Steward.  The company denied Good Point Recycling dock apointments, which we asked for repeatedly over several days.  If Jim Puckett allegation that the printer "very quickly" went to Chicago, that means he had real-time knowledge of the tracked device.  It now appears that device WOULD have been delivered from my company to the E-Steward if our dock appointments, which we'd already shipped several, had not been cut off while the GPS device was in our factory.  I may reveal the frustration from emails sent by my employees over the E-Steward delivery cancellations, and my pleading with the Chicago area e-Steward to let us deliver the loads which we had been issued purchase orders for.  We can show that resulted in a change to the other R2 Chicago company - the one we had not tried delivering to, but whose audit showed R2 certified downstreams in Hong Kong... and how we sought to relieve that pressure by re-sorting potenially reuseable laser printers for the R2 load.  

 Put this another way:  The ratio in 2015 for loads shipped to the E-Steward to the R2 company (total all materials, not just printers) is 93.3% to 6.7%  The odds that a device would wind up at one of the two companies, rather than the other, is striking.

If is apparently true that MIT undergraduates were instructed how to find a non-public office on the basis that they disclosed my company, and they selected a laser printer which sells used for $349 to drop off there, it was bad enough.   If in addition, BAN knew the location of the device in real time, and the Chicago area e-Stewards recycler cancelled the 5th load already prepared for it because it had information about the GPS device from BAN, then that is potentially criminal. 

Got that?  That would appear to be a violation of SEC rules at best, and potentially a criminal enterprise if the collusion was intended to harm R2 companies that were using the same "approved" downstream as E-Stewards companies (which have agreements to pay BAN $$ a share of their income, which goes in Jim's pocket).  Before I provide the evidence of it, I would suggest that BAN's Board of Directors get in touch with me, so I can provide them and MIT's attorney with information that should not be given to Jim.  I have testimony from E-Stewards that they were aware of the GPS devices before BAN made the public announcement, and in some cases actually helped deploy the devices against competitors. 

I had asked MIT about this possibility in May 2016, and MIT provided my letter to BAN (without cc'ing me or informing me).  It should have been an opportunity for Jim to vet the methodology internally.  If, as it now appears, BAN leaked information selectively to e-Stewards, and some of that was "live" information, someone could actually go to prison.  There may be a legitimate explanation for the cancellation of the printer scrap delivery to the E-Steward company.  But if not, E-Stewards and BAN itself could be the biggest collateral damage of their leaders obsession with Robin Ingenthron and Fair Trade Recycling.

Collateral Damage 8. My personal relationships

Admittedly, I look obsessed, too.  That ain't good.  But its the business relationships I'm building, the memberships in Fair Trade Recycling, that have been collateral damage to BAN's 2 page hit job.  And yeah, I'll write more about that too.  It's the financial damage that would become a part of a defamation or slander lawsuit.  But those are expensive and tie up the legal system.  It is the due diligence of Boards of Directors and MIT Ethics departments which will shake this out when they see that I have a very legitimate case.

Let the due diligence begin.

Real Time reporting on BAN Report - Dell Reconnect Fallacy

Click BELOW for Real Time Analysis Blog on Controversial NGO + MIT Allegations #trackingewaste.

- NGO False Claims Act Rebuttal
- Methodology / Fallacy in Sampling Data
- False Claims vs. Goodwill Industries, Dell ReConnect
- EStewards Accusations vs. Total Reclaim / Seattle
- Alternative Explanations for "conclusions" reached by NGO
- Research leads, links to vetted data.

Unlike normal blogs, this one is being updated with information about the "scandal" of alleged e-waste exports to Hong Kong and other countries, made to support NGO's claim that it's paid e-Stewards certification, or national legislation, would cure environmental problems overseas without resulting in collateral damage (impugning reuse and refurbishment operations, boycotting geeks of color, sacrificing tradeable commodities covered under WTO "cores" law, racial profiling of recycling operations, false attribution of Basel Convention standards Annex IX B1110, fallacy in sampling data, sampling bias, etc.).  The chief counterpoints to this blog (the story we are debating) can be found at the links below.

http://kcts9.org/programs/circuit

BAN Web page (just going online) http://www.ban.org/trash-transparency

MIT SenseAble City http://senseable.mit.edu/monitour

Like every one of these blogs, the views here are only my own and do not represent my company, any research or journalists I cooperate with, or the not-for-profit Fair Trade Recycling group (WR3A). The views are put forth in belief in debate, rebuttal, and defense of a trade which has received exaggerated and hyperbolized accusations, often against Emerging Market Tech Sector businesses who have little ability to respond to "profiles" created in the Western Press.

For ten years the Blog has told everyone that the NGO was making up the "80% Export" e-scrap myth out of whole cloth, and knew it was misleading reputable journalists in an "e-waste hoax" campaign that benefited the NGO financially.   For ten years we have documented that the NGO uses photos of poor people, implying it benefits them, but never spending a single penny to assist or aid them in any way.  For ten years this blog has alerted Interpol, EPA, trade associations, university researchers, interns, legislators and journalists of misleading and incomplete information being generated about the import and export of second-hand and secondary market commodities.

I do not know how long I will update this piece on the NGO's accusations against Goodwill Industries and certified and non-certified electronics recycling companies, and the overseas markets they may or may not trade with.  My passion for this is driven by victims in developing and emerging markets who are a) recycling material their own country traded in to them in upgrade, b) refurbishing newer second hand equipment imported from the USA and other "rich" nations, and c) general disgust as an environmentalist that organizations seeking to benefit from "strategic metals retention" or "planned obsolescence" or "protecting shredding investments" may be funding a propaganda campaign against the people I called (over ten years ago) "Geeks of Color".

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5 Bells: Blogger Declares "E-Waste Hoax is Dead"

Shaba Kahamba, the Artist formerly known as Prince, and the E-Waste Hoax are dead.*

The second of the list, Prince, the incredibly famous purple dancer, was found passed out in an elevator, and declared dead at age 57.  Shaba Kahamba, the Congolese Soukous bassist legend, died peacefully in retirement in the Netherlands on Tuesday... in somewhat undeserved obscurity.   And the E-Waste Hoax will be remembered only by its silence.  There is no "correction" forthcoming from BBC, Economist, NYT, NPR, etc.  But I predict no further national or international coverage of any "e-Waste" emergency this Earth Day, one year after the news "jumped the shark" in declaring a small scrap metal pile in Western Africa to be the largest E-Waste Dump on Earth.

After a decade of NGO hype, what makes me think that "ewastegate" is over?  And not with a clang, but a whimper?

There may be some residual stories about "e-waste exports" cropping about here and there, but mostly they are coming from rank amateurs like Kevin McElvaney, people in their 20s with a camera. But the source of the hoax statistics is running out of funding, and not a decade too soon.

*homage to "the Oxford Comma"... Shaba K and TAFKAP are two different people.

Agbogbloshie "In the Life" by Wondergem and Lalouschek

Alex Wondergem and Adu Lalouschek have finally put up the full 11 minute documentary "Scrap Metal Men" on Youtube.



This shows how 100% of the material called "e-waste" gets to what has been called the "biggest ewaste dump in the world" and described as "500 Sea Containers Per Month".

This is a scandal and the environmental community needs to get out and denounce the "Story of Stuff" and NGOs who accused #FreeJoeBenson "Hurricane Benson" and other geeks of color of importing junk.

Lesson in CRT Cullet and Sintering: Size Matters

The EPA vs. American Mining Congress case in the early 90s resulted in the "remanded smelter slag" rule.  The mining industry convinced the court, and even EPA, that treating slag piles as "waste" with 365 day storage ("speculative accumulation") under RCRA statute, did more harm than good.   Today, it's an industrial mineral, and can be kept under basically the same conditions  as mined angelsite or other leaded silicate, because treating it otherwise is anti-recycling.

Anti-recycling means that the identical chemical solid is governed more strictly if it's recovered from waste instead of mined from the ground.

Breaking News! UK Court Sends Joe Benson Case Back for Retrial

Last summer I got to meet and interview Joseph Benson of BJ Electronics in London (Bullyboys Blogs).  He was the Nigerian TV repairman who was ridden out on a rail by UK Journalists, citing Basel Action Network "statistics", accusing Benson and others of "#wastecrime".

I just got word from a reliable source that Benson's appeal is successful, and the case will be sent back for retrial.   Benson has spent far more on attorney and court fees than he would have by paying off the fine.  While I don't have first hand knowledge of the case or UK law and have never traded with Benson nor exported TVs to Africa, he is putting his money where his mouth is, and that counts for something.



There is a lot of buzz about Africa and how the recycling can be "reformed".   I am still somewhat disgusted by environmentalists who jump on the "reform" bandwagon without first apologizing for racial profiling and exaggerating in the first place.

This blog tried to make a lot of noise over our research showing that Nigerian cities had 6.9 million households with television in 2007.  That's a dozen Vermonts.  Nigerian cities have dumps where old TVs go, just like New England had in the 1990s when I was tasked with establishing a recycling infrastructure with EPA and Massachusetts DEP.

See the television on the young man's head in Waste & Recycling News above?

It looks a lot more like musician Prince Nico Mbarga's 1977 television than it looks like anything filmed in Joe Benson's containers.



This racial profiling under the banner of "Environmental Justice" does tell a story of exploitation, but the exploitation is begin done by the NGOs.  They are raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars in "E-Steward" licensing on the backs of men like Joe Benson, whose only crime is trying to build an infrastructure for mass-communication with used cell phones, used tvs, and used computers for internet.   The Africans aren't doing anything that people in poor neighborhoods in the USA wouldn't do - or don't do - when they cannot afford a $2000 television.  If you are shopping for a used one, you go to a wealthier neighborhood.

What Greenpeace saw.  Hotel TVs from London hotel upgrades?  Or "scary black people"?

Environmentalists, take heed, this is a powderkeg.  I have been writing a philosophical piece about "ManBearPig", the label people snicker at from South Park Studios classic throwup of environmental sanctimony.  I'm an environmentalist, I challenge anyone to compare the way they planned their lives to reduce impact on the world ecosystem.  I'm sensitive to the dangers of cynicism against green.

But all the more reason to nip our own mistakes in the bud.   The study of environmental health has to be a lot more like the study of human health, with fewer manbearpig bandwagons and more primum non nocere (do no harm, the Hippocratic Oath).

Bullyboys X: 城管 Authoratah!! Pope Francis to Joseph Benson

城管   [chéngguǎn / cheng2 guan3] noun. 

City management or administrators tasked with enforcing municipal laws, regulations, codes, etc. They have a very poor reputation amongst Chinese people as being corrupt and violent brutes, best known for often physically bullying illegal street vendors, hawkers, and peddlers. See examples.

This post is from the ChinaSmack Glossary, which is a collection of current idioms and expressions, like "memes" in China.  You've heard of the "green fence" and the crackdown on printer refurbishers in Foshan?  This may be the Chinese word for the people Joseph Benson called "bullyboys".

Good news.  The number of poor recyclers' defenders has just increased by One.

Pope Francis has made an amateur video praising the world's "cartoneros" — the poor people who pick through garbage to find recyclable and reusable goods. He says their work is dignified and good for the environment. [ABC News]

It is so bloody obvious that an activity, such as recycling, which is praised as good citizenship when performed by rich people, does not deserve less merit when performed by poor people.  How often do MIT and the Pope and modern artists in NYC agree?

We now have author Adam Minter, NYC Artist/Oscar Winner Vik Muniz, former Basel Convention Secretary Katharina Kummer Peiry, researchers from Memorial University, USC, PUCP, MIT, Africans and Chinese, all signing the praise of recycling in a fair manner.   Where with the backlash be felt?

By Authorities who hitched their wagons to Basel Action Network's campaign of poverty porn photos, false statistics, and halloween rhetoric.

Authority.  Bullyboys.  城管

[Pope] Francis, known for his simple habits, has denounced today's "throw-away culture" and said in the video that food that is tossed aside each day could feed all the world's hungry.

Francis has a long relationship with Argentina's "cartoneros" — literally "cardboard people." He would celebrate Mass for them as archbishop and invited them on stage during World Youth Day in July.

Middle managers, the tide has turned.  The Vermont E-Waste Massacree will be the Wounded Knee of the battle against good enough markets.  When Chinese bloggers are complaining about the same thing as the Pope, African TV repairmen (Joe Benson), and New York professional artists, the Temp Light is on your motorcycle.   Ignore it and ruin your vehicle.  E-Stewards has to execute Plan B, throw Eric Cartman out of the Executive Director chair.  Even Donald Summers, the former BAN.org consultant who (18 months ago) called my views on Fair Trade Recycling "a huge outlier", now works for ISRI.

"Recycling good." say Og, beating a reused mammoth bone against an elk antler.

Bullboys 11: "My Generation Did WHAT??" to CRT Glass Markets

So I used to sell to Egypt, now I don't.

I used to sell to Indonesia, but it's illegal now, so I stopped.

And for years I exported to Malaysia for refurbishing, and that factory - which recycled 100% of accidental breakage at the CRT glass furnace in KL - no longer speaks English.  We gave them a price cut in return for their obtaining ISO14001 certification.  They began a takeback program, creating a domestic Malaysia CRT recycling infrastructure...

It's all dead.  Supply and demand.

The E-Waste Industry, at the EScrap Conference in Orlando, will be talking about there being no demand for CRT glass, cathode ray tube cullet.   But that's not exactly what there's no demand for.

There's no demand for self-righteous bigotry and b******t.

Back to the drawing board.  I can cross off lots of places that are expensive to visit, expensive to audit, and give R2 Auditors the heeby-jeebies.  Turns out, the heeby-jeeby feeling is mutual.  In Vermont, we have practically eliminated CRT export for reuse.  I could become an E-Steward right now, if I was willing to pay the dues.  I'm not doing anything they don't want me to do.

So gee... I should look back at the invitation to join E-Stewards, the gracious invitation extended to me last
winter.   Sure, I'm qualified now to be a "steward".  But, it's wasted on me.  See, I'm really not into calling innocent people guilty, and the whole making myself look like a better recycler by making other people look worse.   If an all white country club chased off my colored fiance, and said now I could be a member, I wouldn't be too keen with all that.  

I'm E-Steward qualified, E-Steward eligible, E-Steward compliant. I'm a good ole e-waste steward boy. Just got to show them my downstreams and write them a check.

How to Fix E-Waste in Africa in 5 Easy Steps

StEP into recycling

Here is a roadmap for recycling used electronics in Africa, in 5 Simple Steps.

1.  Correctly report the problems.  

African cities have had TVs and electronics for several decades and generate their own "e-waste".  Most of the "ewaste" filmed (BAN, Greenpeace) at dumps was not recently reported, but "takeback" from reuse markets which import newer product.  We want to further reform the trade, not to nuke it.

2.  De-Criminalize Purchase for repair and reuse in the EU.   

The reuse people are not "going back to Eden" if you boycott them.  They are tinkerers who create good jobs and affordable product in African marketplaces.  We want to improve their jobs, not to nuke them.

3. Use value of exports to incentivize domestic African takeback infrastructure.   

Many Africans who purchase imported reuse goods also do repair for domestic electronics. The abandoned repairs are a form a product takeback infrastructure. In fact, it's EXACTLY the same as the evolution of electronics repair and sale in Massachusetts in the 1970s.   

TV repair shops learned they could make more money if they offered a choice of Retail Replacement as well as Repair, letting the consumer make a choice.  When the consumer chooses not to repair (or worse, asks for the unit to be repaired but then changes their mind and doesn't return for it), the TV repairperson becomes a takeback operation.  When Masschusetts DEP enacted the first "ewaste" law in America (CRT Waste Ban), it was a TV repair family which created the largest TV recycling operation in the USA.  Africa is on the same path.

4.  Recycling, Reconciliation and mass balance.   

Hand-labor recycling is actually cleaner and produces better results than mechanical shredding. Just don't burn the items you disassemble, and recycling is still profitable.  The caveat is CRT glass and mercury backlighting.

Left purely to the free market, Africa will have little incentive to properly recycle CRT glass (the most expensive component).   The value of reuse exports should be adjusted, reducing sale price to Europe or the USA according to the actual recycling and takeback, and should be monitored, or they will accumulate the same CRT glass piles the USA has accumulated.

This system preserves Tinkerer Blessing jobs (compared to StEP's OEM-funded solution).  It will also work in India and other emerging markets.  But there's one immediate step we need to take first.

5.  Where scrap recycling, repair, and refurbishment already exist, nurture it.

Major CRT glass recycling operations have been shut down by friendly fire.    In Indonesia, Malaysia, and Southern China, semiknockdown (refurbishing) factories, glass washing operations, and warranty-repair-turned-takeback operations have been closed.  It is not too late to save repair in Africa.  

As Recycling Director for the Massachusetts DEP in the 1990s, I tried always to preserve existing expertise and infrastructure.   Massachusetts had not prepared Salvation Army, Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul for new freon rules in the 1980s, and created a "white goods" glut.  I was determined not to do that, and we took care of our scrap paper packers, our TV repairpeople, and our charities.   The Massachusetts model of charity partnerships was later adapted by Dell in its Goodwill ReConnect program (I met with Michael Dell and Pat Nathan personally in 2001, suggesting the partnership would take them out of the BAN attack on Dell's Unicor prison recycling program at that time). 

The same partnership approach can succeed in Africa. Rather than demonize, demoralize, insult and ridicule the scrap boys and repair technicians, the entrepreneurs like Joseph Benson or Hamdy Moussa or Souleymane Sao, we need to defend them.   Touche pas a mon pote, E-Stewards.

Bullyboy 6: Eden is Not On Our Map

Fair Trade Recycling.   Our vision is not the same, perhaps, as Basel Action Network, or the "Back to Eden" program of Interpol.  Arresting dozens of Africans and seizing thousands of "good enough" televisions and monitors, purchased for repair and resale, will not get us where we are going.

Where are we going?  According to the Economist, to the end of poverty.  The world population is making the same progress as the United States made, in standard of living, for the past 100 years.

Nearly 1 billion people have left poverty in 20 years.

In "Towards the End of Poverty", the Economist shows how at this rate, another billion will leave poverty in a decade.

This  is our vision.  Africans with television, barios with high speed internet, rice fields with smart phones.  Yes, that means they will "generate e-waste", just as we did/do.  But "Back to Eden" isn't on our Map.