BAN Spins: How the Basel Action Network Saved Africa

This month, the UK is moving to change its laws to stop the export of used televisions.  You know, the used TVs which make up 70% of sales in African markets, which created about 7 million households with TV in Nigeria.  And the CRT computer monitors, which Africans used to set up the internet cafes which led to the Egyptian Spring.

In about 10 days, new regulations will come into force to explain the 2009 arrest of an African, Joe Benson, who sold the TVs before the laws were changed.  You could call it "tying up a loose end".

But there's another loose end to attend to.   Last month, Basel Action Network publicly disavowed the "80% Export" statistic in response to a Bloomberg editorial (Adam Minter).   Also, BAN Executive Director Jim Puckett applauded this UNEP study.

"The majority of refurbished products stem from imports via the ports of Lagos. The interim results from project component 2, the Nigerian e-Waste Country Assessment, show that 70% of all the imported used equipment is functional and is sold to consumers after testing. 70% of the non-functional share can be repaired within the major markets and is also sold to consumers. 9% of the total imports of used equipment is non-repairable and is directly passed on to collectors and recyclers."

- Final report of the UNEP SBC, E-waste Africa Project,  Lagos & Freiburg, June 2011 

Here's another quote from the Nigeria E-Waste Assessment Study:

"Refurbishing of EEE and the sales of used EEE is an important economic sector (e.g. Alaba market in Lagos). It is a well-organized and  a dynamic  sector that holds the potential for further industrial development. Indirectly, the sector has another important economic role, as it supplies low and middle income households with affordable ICT equipment and other EEE. In the view of the sector’s positive socio-economic performance, all policy measures aiming to improve e-waste management in Nigeria should refrain from undifferentiated banning of  second-hand imports and refurbishing activities and strive for a co-operative approach by including the market and sector associations."

Sounds a lot like "Fair Trade Recycling".  So how does BAN balance the UN Study, showing 91% reuse, recommending AGAINST laws like CAER's Green-Thompson bill, with its applause for the crackdown by Interpol and Europe on exporters like "Hurricane" Joseph Benson of BJ Electronics?

First, embrace the study.  Second, take credit.

Quotes from Jim Puckett:

"I am very satisfied with the quality of the UNEP studies. I know well the authors and have worked with them and discussed findings with them.   These studies were funded due to our film Digital Dump which was shown at the Basel meeting whereafter the EU donated 1 million Euros to assist Africa in solving the e-waste crisis.  

"Nigeria was faced with a very serious abusive importation scene when we first arrived in 2005.  They took the appropriate action and Nigeria is one of the great success stories of addressing the e-waste crisis.  In China it has worsened, in Nigeria, they have really exercised control over the egregious toxic e-waste trade impacting their environment.  "

This is Jim Puckett's spin on the UNEP study, which took 279 sea containers in Nigeria (104 of which came from Joseph Benson's adapted country, the United Kingdom).   The researchers pieced all the TVs out, and found 91% reuse rate.   He tries (in the second quote) to take credit for the turnaround.

In fact, BAN was very, very busy in 2009 and 2010, the period when the 91% reuse was documented in the UNEP study.

Here is a report from the University of Northhampton (UK) which uses BAN as a source, stating only 25% of what Nigerian techs imported could be fixed or reused - complete with photos by master photographer Jim Puckett himself.  What a terrific turnaround it is, from only 25% reuse to 91%.

So fast a "turnaround" that the innocence/improvement happened before the crime!

Here is the infamous 2009 Interpol report, which uses the same (or similar, they never seem to be exactly the same) statistics from BAN's "study" on the percentage of waste in African used electronics exports.  Did Puckett notify Interpol that it was actually much better in 2009?  No.  BAN issued a press release, referring to the Africans as "Organized Crime".  And the source of Interpol's data on the extent of the dumping - MSU - cites who else?  BAN, their report that 80% of exports of CRTs are for primitive recycling.

More from 2009 and 2010:  The smoking guns

Friend Of The Court: BAN Defamation of Intercon

Below is why I think the case of defamation against Basel Action Network is long overdue.

The defamation case I'd suggest is as follows.  Whether or not Intercon exported hazardous waste, BAN did not know what exactly Intercon supposedly shipped at the time they notified China's EPA.  BAN also knows that China considers used tested working laptops to be hazardous waste.  BAN also knows, that when they broadcast the Chinese determination, that most people will assume the "crime" to be shipping raw unsorted junk, 80% waste, to a yard where children will burn it.  BAN knows about "profiling" the export market - because BAN invented the profile, and makes all their cash from it.

This may be Little Big Horn.  BAN may have finally bitten off more than they can chew.  The Intercon Case looks to me like STRIKE THREE vs. the Basel Action Network

It is Criminal in China to import "second hand" material.  The Chinese Communist Party owns factories which make new goods, and is not shy about enforcing its plans for obsolescence.  If BAN were a local activist group, they could be forgiven for making the assumption that an unknown - working laptop, repairable monitor, or bale of Christmas Tree lights, might be hazardous.  But they play it both ways, as the foremost most knowledgeable, certifying authority, and the well-meaning activist "just asking questions".

BAN shifts nimbly from legal expert, to paid representative, to a hyping watchdog.  In this particular case, of the Chicago Heights recycler, BAN knows that the container may have contained A) working equipment, B) scrap sent to an honorable professional recycler, or C) perhaps hazardous waste for children to burn... but BAN did not know which one when they made their announcement... because the Chinese source (whom they notified to inspect) makes NO distinction between these "second hand" goods.

In this particular case, when BAN informed the Chinese that Intercon had shipped the containerload, the determination by the Chinese official to call the second-hand goods (working, repairable, recyclable, or waste) a "hazardous waste" was a virtual certainty.

At a conference in Washington DC, EPA, Interpol officials met for a special session on "e-Waste" exports.  Jim Puckett was in attendance, and was a speaker.  On the same day, a speaker from the Sino EPA in Hong Kong spoke to the group in English.   He spoke about "green wastes", a listing China was going to propose to improve imports.  He also spoke about China's intention to stop "trans-boundary" movement of containers which change ships in Hong Kong's port.

[The latter was quite disturbing to me... China may be the competent authority for what is defined as "waste" and "hazardous" within China (though it may not, the courts in Hong Kong would allow a suit to bring Department of Commerce in to challenge a "non-commodity" or "non-property" ruling).  But for China to say it can declare a commodity to be "waste" when it is shipped from Party A to Party B, and enters the port of China (Party C) in transit, is an alarming precedent to announce.]

I raised my hand from the audience and was called on to ask a question.  It was a question I had asked Chinese EPA officials in Hong Kong a few years earlier.  I had been told that China identifies ANYTHING "second hand" to be waste.  I asked whether, if I brought a one-week old fully functional tested working laptop with me to China, and decided to give it as a gift to a Chinese host, whether my prior use of the laptop rendered it "waste" and "hazardous waste".  The Chinese Official (I can find his name) said I was right, it's an environmental crime.  That the laptop was second hand, and contained circuit boards, and therefore it would be an illegal transboundary movement in China.

Second-hand is defined as "waste" in China.  So a Chinese "discovery" of second hand equipment may sound  a lot worse than it is.  You just don't know until you get the contents of the container.

BAN's leader Jim Puckett was at this meeting, and he and I have had this discussion in person, and he knows full well that China would identify any tested working equipment as "hazardous waste".  According to his website, he's been an expert in these laws for over a decade.  By contrast, Basel Convention (Annex IX B1110) considers even non-working second-hand equipment to be potentially commodity and not waste (if sent for repair), and the USA considers the intent of the buyer and shipper in the determination.   BAN has its own definition involving removal of parts prior to repair (no one in the world does this, to my knowledge).  The point is that the "determination" is used by BAN in its press release to confuse journalists, just as they confused CBS, PBS, and Terry Gross about the "80%" of the world which generates half of all e-waste on their own.


BAN is an expert on these issues of determination and trade barriers, and yet claims they relied on the inspection of a Chinese authority in making a public announcement about Intercon.  BAN cannot claim not to know that the definition of the Chinese authority included non-hazardous and even working items.  (In fact there is a WTO lawsuit over China's use of environmental labels as a non-tariff trade barrier).   By telling China that Intercon had shipped a container, and that Intercon was a trader in second-hand electronics, BAN had basically set in motion a test which Intercon would fail no matter what the contents of Intercon's containers. If BAN didn't know the contents to start with, it was a reckless act to sick the Chinese enforcer on the container in the first place.  And the signs are that BAN couldn't wait to announce what they were going to announce... they launched at Intercon the same way as they launched at Asian and African businesspeople in the past.

China's interpretation of second-hand makes it a watchdog that bites everybody, criminals, children, and mailmen.  I know that, and BAN knows that.  But the American public is going to believe that there was a criminal involved, based on BAN's "information" that 80% of all USA second hand goods are wastes burned in primitive conditions.

Did BAN defame Intercon?  We know for a fact that BAN is in the defamation business.  It's what they do. They defame people every day... this was Strike 3.   Perhaps this time they defamed the wrong guy.

Is E-Waste Hazardous or Universal Waste? Not Yet...

Following last weekend's surreal blogging into the mind of Jesus, it's time to focus on recycling regulations and law.  EPA is about to tinker with RCRA definitions of used electronics, purportedly to close the "loophole" of calling something reused a "commodity".  It appears EPA wants to follow China's lead, and declare reused metals "wastes".   This will help complete the snatch of authority from Department of Commerce by the Environmental Protection Agency, once again leaving horrific mining of raw virgin ores "commodity" and relatively clean scrap metals will be "hazardous wastes."

I've written previously about the "rights" of states to form rules which are stricter than federal rules - so long as the federal rule agrees that the substance is in fact "discarded".  But the state environmental agency cannot charge into your house to find a "working" unit, and whether something "works" is a silly test if the non-working P4 is worth much more than the working P2.

What if a state wants to regulate an item which is excluded from "solid waste" as a "universal waste"?  Can an item which meets commodity exclusion rules still be hazardous?  Can it be universal, and hazardous, but not a waste?  Earlier this year, we looked at the "chicken or egg" problems which arose in one state which tried to make e-waste "universal waste" without classifying reuse as waste.

EPA and "universal waste" is something I'm very familiar with, going back to my days as recycling director for the Massachusetts DEP Division of Solid Waste (and later Consumer Programs division director).   EPA ultimately sided with Mass. DEP in deciding that scrap metals should not be treated much differently from mined ores.  If the ores were hazardous, then so should the scrap, but when the ores were not treated as hazardous, making scrap "hazardous" merely because it was secondary material was a mistake we didn't make.  Why another refresher course on universal waste and RCRA?

EPA has just proposed major changes to this, which I'll write about later.  

For now, since so many are confused about what RCRA says in the first place, is a refresher course in USA waste vs. commodity law.  The current USA law treats recycled scrap as the equivalent of mined ore.  That was smart.  The perfect should not be the enemy of the good, and if recycled content is the only alternative to virgin content, and the production of virgin content is more toxic than recycling, recycling is the good.  14/15 largest Superfund sites (which bankrupted Superfund more than a decade ago) are "hard-rock" metals mines.   RCRA as written saw that the worst recycling is better than the best mining.  Thanks to "Recycling Watchdogs", that is about to change.  But for now, here is the way recycling is governed by federal law:

Related Posts

• Are CRTs Regulated?  An E-Waste Compliance Primer
• Toe Tags - We Agree - Now Let's Communicate
• "Not Discarded" Label - Made in Vermont
• Short Factual Posts on Haz Waste and "E-Waste"

First, here is the language in § 261.4  of RCRA