Geography Baiting 1: MIT Senseable City Lab "MoniTour" Goes Offline

Has the correspondence from Unwitting, Unwilling Research Subjects finally got traction at MIT's Legal Office?  After 3 months of silent treatment, communications from MIT and BAN reignite the blog.

It is the end of summer vacation for Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Senseable City Lab. Professors have been on vacation, with little time to return calls or respond to our letters of May and June 2016.  But last week got a response back last week from MIT's Legal Department, saying that all future inquiries and correspondence should go through them.

This is one week after we cc'd MIT's Senseable City Lab Director, Carlo Ratti, in response to an email to Yours Truly from my an old pal, Jim Puckett, Executive Director of Basel Action Network.  BAN's parterner status with MIT is described in MIT's MoniTour website. You know, http://senseable.mit.edu/monitour

**** static ****

EDIT:  The website is restored now, and may have been unavailable only via my chrome browser which appears to be failing at several sites.  Speculation that MIT had taken the site down was wrong.

The site is 404, not available.  Could be a fluke, a temporary outage. But has been at least 3 days now. It might be premature to correlate MIT's shuffle with the written correspondence I've recently received from Basel Action Network and MIT's Legal Office.  But I predicted in my first response to the @KCTS PBS 9 airing of the "sting" on overseas electronics reuse, repair and recycling - MIT does not have a dog in this fight.  MIT has thousands of international students who know intimately the warts, beauty, sweat, and ingenuity across the oceans, and we predicted that MIT Ethics Committees would hold Carlo Ratti's Senseable City to a higher standard than to draw inferences on the "circular economy" based on BAN's notorious geography-baiting.

It's not exactly race baiting, since we don't know who in the USA owned or touched a device.  But BAN's descriptions of Hong Kong Province - which is wealthier per capita than the USA - with words like "primitive" and "rice paddy" should have been caught internally by MIT, without the help of a Vermont junk dealer's blog.

Someone commented that MIT might be engaged in a "cover up", but my friends in academia share my optimism.  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's gravitas was clearly accepted as peer review and diligence by the reporters, and from MIT Senseable City Lab's response, it clearly was not merited or intended as such.

Google cache of the MIT-based webpage shows the original text which described the now AWOL web page as "A joint project between the Basel Action Network and the MIT Senseable City Lab".  And that's not BAN's claim, it's MIT Senseable City Lab indicating it's a "joint project" partner.  (copy and paste below, so you can recreate your own 404).

Monitour / MIT Senseable City Lab

senseable.mit.edu/monitour

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

A joint project between the Basel Action Network and the MIT Senseable City Lab ... this site in graphic form and will also be released in a series of reports by BAN. ... City Lab 2. a PDF copy of the publication is sent to senseable-press@mit.edu.

You've visited this page 2 times. Last visit: 8/27/16

Carlo Ratti's only direct response to my 14 pages of inquiries was 2 paragraphs. It could have been even shorter:  "It's BAN's project, not MIT's".  Or "People don't track People, GPS devices track people," or "GPS tags don't track people, they track peoples stuff".  "MIT just gave BAN the tools to track unwitting, unwilling participants, we didn't do it ourselves."

But Carlo Ratti spoke to PBS and clearly reviewed the pages on the now AWOL website stating that destinations, like Hong Kong, were "previously unknown".  The gist of my letter was:

"how did MIT determine my business transactions were 'previously unknown', unless it meant 'unknown to MIT and BAN', which isn't much of a defense of the ethical 'unwitting subject' test."

In fact, I'd been to Hong Kong (and Taiwan) one month before the PBS story aired.  Here's Video of Hong Kong from April 2016 below - with my 15 year old son, who I had taken to meet and have dinner with one of the best and brightest video display engineers I'd ever met (in Taipei).  Does the wifi-enabled, air-conditioned luxury ferris wheel ride among skyscrapers depict "typical Hong Kong"?  Of course not. Nor does +KCTS 9 film of a printer scrap yard in Yuen Long.  "Geographical Profiling" shortcut of the necessary effort to track each and every recyclable through each and every technician, and not to depict Asians as "primitives" with just obscured little points on a map.

You can't "obscure" destinations in Hong Kong on your website and then use photos of one location to "profile" anyone who does business with Hong Kong.  That's Geography-Baiting journalists and readers, appealing to their worst fears about recyclers and refurbishers in emerging markets.  You didn't show the Geeks of Color.

You can show Deliverance to depict America, but you've got to show Big Bang Theory, too.  Otherwise, it's propaganda, which BAN has been accused of for a long time, plenty long enough for MIT to vet them as a "joint partner" in describing emerging market "shantytowns" and "rice paddies" and "orphans" and "Sodom and Gomorrahs" and "E-Waste Hell" etc., etc., etc.

How does MIT's partner characterize the people who live and work in and built this location?

Carl A. Zimring's "Clean and White", A Premature Review

This is a pre-Review of a book I haven't yet read... on a subject I write about obsessively.  And because I can now be accused - literally - of "prejudice" (prejudging a book about environmental justice is like, a mind trip).

"Clean and White:  A History of Environmental Racism in the United States" by Carl A. Zimring.

Carl A. Zimring is Associate Professor of Sustainability Studies at the Pratt Institute. He is the author of Cash for Your Trash: Scrap Recycling in America and general editor of the Encyclopedia of Consumption and Waste: The Social Science of Garbage. His new book Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States is available from New York University Press. 

This is all in good fun, I will read the book and hope others will order it too, giving Carl A. Zimring some early buzz should be forgiven...

Environmental Anaphylaxis: Auto-immune Attacks by Environmentalists on Harmless Africans

This is another "Environmental Malpractice" blog.  And it's not an easy read. Some may decide to ignore it.  But the number of people who "get it" is steadily increasing.  This summer another major player "took the red pill", and realized that "saving Africa" is not accomplished by impugning motives, environmental balance, or skills of Africa's "ewaste" Tech Sector.  In this blog I try by analogy to connect the #whitesaviorcomplex, #charitableindustrialcomplex, and #environmentalmalpractice to greater liabilities and inefficiencies in societal systems designed to cure flaws - from affordable housing, to peanut allergy, to snakebite kit sales, or to used car sales in Eastern Europe... 

It's all about bringing Stewardship Advocates to practice Stewardship (liability) for their own regulatory systems, to do no harm, and when they find out they have been harming, "adjust course".  It doesn't require a mea culpa if you do the right thing from now on.

Last week I was alerted to an editorial by Laura Seay and Alex de Waal (July 17)

This was via a tweet from AfricanSolarLLP, a boots-on-the-ground solar energy project coordinator based in Accra, Ghana, who (along with Alhassan Abdallah) has been bringing first-hand accounting of the Old Fadama / Agbogbloshie real estate evictions (vs. "Sodom and Gomorrah") via @Twitter.

TASC‏@AfricanSolarLLPDo-gooders, do no harm: What are the best-and worst-ways to help those mired in international conflicts? http://wpo.st/jX-R0 

The article (Q and A) addresses many of the cautions I've undertaken, and there's some heavy stuff to dish out to readers of de Tocqueville.  An increasing number of environmentalist intellectuals like myself, may remain ardent environmentalists, but still fear the "churchiness" of the environmental-regulatory complex.  This is also true of other "world savers", we can be ardently pro African while suspicious of what Peter Buffet called the Charitable Industrial Complex.  In fact, much of it could apply to Fair Trade Recycling, and is a reminder of the dangers in heroicizing our "geeks of color" and "hurricane bensons".

Making more people aware of an injustice by oversimplifying the problems and the remedies is Poster Child Policy.  Making sad photo-essays of orphans working in scrap yards, and representing those children to be "emblematic" or embodiment or archetypal of African importers, is wrong on the science, and leads to environmental malpractice.

The challenge is to neither write so densely that no one reads it, nor so simply that it sets people off with the equivalent of racial profiling.  Basel Action Network "simplified" the long and complicated Annex IX, B1110 rules on export for repair and refurbishment by telling virtually everyone that it meant "fully functional", creating a set of enforcement guidelines which Joe Benson eventually gave up and pled guilty to in return for a decreased sentence.  [NOTE: That is not "twice convicted of the same offense," the just-world-fallacy / panacea shared by CWIT].  But at the same time, we have to recognize that progress has been made in understanding the nuance of "ewaste exports", and I think I can report that arrests of other Africa Tech Sector geeks like Joe Benson are less likely.

The awareness of the misuse, and misapplication, of well-meaning guidelines should serve as a broader lesson for all environmental interventions.  First, do no harm.  Protection of the innocent takes precedence over the simplified profiling guidelines (what Emile Lindemiller of Interpol called "Proactive Enforcement" - get out there and accuse people before the crime has been committed, and less environmental harm will occur.

That's like giving snakebite kits to everyone and telling them to incise and suck out the venom, whether you know the snake was poison or not.

I'm happy to report that Interpol staff may not be electronic repair experts, but I'm reassured they can eventually see when their enforcement is being abused by interested parties.  Eventually, they will get it right.  What environmentalists need to learn is to take responsibility for our stewardship and environmental dumping enforcement "cures" before a proper diagnosis has been reached.

This is how the study of environmental health must learn the same lessons as the application of western medicine to promote human health.  It's ok for a doctor to make a mistake, a mistake is not malpractice.  It becomes malpractice when you have been provided information to correct your practice and don't follow it.  This is the pivot point.  We don't blame NGOs or Interpol for believing 80-90% of used computer purchases by Africa's techs were for "primitive burning" when they actually believed it, and were told so by the press.  Once the source of the statistics has been discredited (and we can safely say we are at that point), it is the way the agencies - International and Non-profit - comport themselves going forward which matters.

Yin, Yang, or Omm Part 2: White Man Ju-ju vs. 3-Point Shot

In Part I we took a close up of an actual problem - the past decade of managing Cathode Ray Tube televisions and monitors, after briefly introducing the concept that guilt and liability - positive ethical systems - can be twisted into bad law via fear, greed, and envy.  

What's the "green scare?"  

Same as the red scare.  Export Sympathizer is today's "Commie"

The Responsible Electronics Recycling Act (RERA), HR2791, was the focus.  The bill acknowledges overseas refurbishing and recycling operations if and only if the name-brand company (e.g. Dell of Texas) is shipping there (warranty repair, takeback).  That's "responsible".  The contract factories overseas are NOT owned by the name brand, there are no Dell employees at the computer display factory.  If Hurricane Fung, Hurricane Hamdy, Hurricane Benson, or Hurricane Chiu were OEM employees taking back used goods for repair and refurbishment, they'd be "Stewards".  Instead they are "primitive waste criminals".

The Guardian covered Dell for coming out against a geeks of color boycott, and I vigorously applaud Dell for that.   But RERA language creates a "members only" export system.

As the blog got longer, I've cut it into three or four parts.  Poor editing, or de Tocquevillian insight?  Mostly lack of time to edit, I'm running a business after all.  The digression into psychology and ethics is the readers choice, I figure.   Just don't hit the "print" key.

LIABILITY JUJU

EU E-Waste Policy: White Knights Seeking Middle Ground On a Slippery Slope (Part A)

"Solving the E-Waste Problem"  (StEP) is a European association of highly respected professional and academic experts with strong policy pedigrees.   The "Problem Solving" effort is coming into its eight year.  American environmentalists are keen for European environmental leadership.   The electric windmills fanning the landscape are a testament to proactive policy.

StEP represents itself as a "middle ground" organization.  A lot of us have pandered for that position.  BAN labels us as "apologists".

It is natural to seek to leverage the sensational press around "ewaste exports" and the growing tome of facts about international city junkyards.  Agents of conscience naturally seek a middle ground between the Basel Action Network and...  Facts.  Or is it a middle ground between us and "The Other?"   Otherization, or exoticism, the "informal" six out of seven billion people, who have been labelled so likely to poison their children that it warrants a billion dollars in shredding machines and arrests of African traders.  Since BAN has imposed a kind of "original sin" on anyone who has ever purchased an electronic device, replaced one, or sent one for recycling, we begin with a sense of guilt.   "Agents of conscience" once included exporters, a previous generation of ICT and Internet Access "white knights", organized to heal the "digital divide".

These forces have given rise to another EU based organization seeking "middle ground" between internet access and environmental risk of computer waste.  RecyHub has posted an essay on ICTWorks which follows the path into the "middle ground", or "best of two worlds".  RecyHub has asked me, via Twitter, to review it.    ("They asked for it" is an English idiom).

On the one hand, they get the easy A.  A for "Applaud Anything" that moves Europe from the extremely bizarre far-left arrests of African businesspeople, geeks, and technicians.   Any correction from the 2009-2010 "years of breaking CRT glass", is a gift horse.  But since they asked, I have to tell them... they are at a halfway point between alter-globalization (WR3A) and racist slander.

"Electronic components contain toxics and their manipulation without proper tools can easily release them, resulting in environmental damage and health hazards. Up to now electronics have been mainly used in the most industrialized countries and dumped somewhere else when they reached their (perceived) end of life. Although this trade geography is slowly changing, some countries continue to be known e-waste recipients. Ghana, for instance, is trapped between the desire to modernise by acquiring and refurbishing technology and the damaging effects of it when it’s not reusable...

"After all, they don’t have the technology to process that material properly. E-waste exports must therefore end. That’s why a strict ban like the one proposed under the Basel Convention makes sense (taken even further to forbid any e-waste trade), and why the work of countering illegal trade must be supported. 

One thing I've always loved about Europe is the tradition of arguing sophisticated philosophical positions from a historical perspective.  The Europeans often assume Americans don't do that, that we operate in business from some kind of a "lizard brain", seeking efficiency and profit.

OK, Critique of Part A, in pure reason.

1. Toxics are not "easily released".  Europe had to build shredders, which certainly releases them.  Hand disassembly, harvesting parts and components (down the chips and capacitors and power supplies) is not going to yield toxics.  
2. Up to now electronics have not "mainly" been dumped somewhere else at the end of their perceived life.  
3. "Some countries continue to be known e-waste recipients.  Ghana, for instance, is trapped..."  This is absolutely contrary to the study RecyHub refers to, which says Ghana is NOT an "e-waste recipient" but is a 85-91% reuse recipient which generates 90% of its own "e-waste".
4. "Proper tools"?  A downstroke baler is the most complicated tool we use in Vermont.   The best one we bought used for $2,000.

On the third point, simply visit RecyHub's website, where an entire tab titled "Ghana" offers very scientificky looking "statistics".  It links to a Google Documents Page, with "comment function" enabled, which mostly takes statistics from the E-Waste Assessment (Ghana) study (they should also read the larger Nigeria E-Waste Assessment report).

"9% of the total imports of used equipment is non-repairable and is directly passed on to collectors and recyclers."

The very report they cite disproves most of the allegations.  Nigeria's Assessment was more precise, finding 91% repair and reuse, but we'll accept the 80% estimate from the Ghana study (statistics taken from interviews in the latter case, from actual sea container sorts in the Nigeria study).  In either case, brand new product is as bad or worse.  In either case, the studies explain how Nigeria came to have (World Bank 2007 statistic from 2006 assessment) 6,900,000 households with television.  And cities which have had TVs since Prince Nico Mbarga was on the top 10 are generating junk TVs, just as American and European cities do.

What do developing nations really need?  More development.  And taking away "trade" from the toolkit is exactly what they need least.

Where do "tinkering", "reuse", "recycling", "dumping" etc. fall in Harvard's new Social Progress Index?  If you spend time with people who live in the emerging markets, the developing nations, the cities of the "not yet OECD", their aspirations and measures of progress make Europe and America's obsession with "used electronics dumping" seem obscured by clouds of disinformation.

Merry Christmas, Recyclers. Pope Francis (Francisco) Salutes You

The coverage below, in English, carries the Pope's message praising recyclers, and especially the very poorest of recyclers.  In his own words below.  Huffington Post covered it yesterday.  Slashdot covered the same subject - recycling by poor people - today.

Africa Hears "Great White Father" in (Seattle) Washington

Since the successful "Fair Trade Recycling Summit" at Middlebury College on Earth Week 2013, there has been a notable trend in visitors to the website (fairtraderecycling.org) and this blog.

A year ago, the deep blue in the USA (ignore Alaska s.v.p.) showed most readership here.  But Europe was #2.  In a given day now, Europe may not check as often.

But look at Africa and the mideast.  In 873 weekly readers, Africa is showing continued interest, in our exposure of the "science" of e-waste "statistics".

The maps were well lit during the Fair Trade Recycling Summit itself.   355 page views per hour on the video alone.  Some of those were "classroom" views with multiple attendees.

But as Americans shrug and say "Huh, that's interesting", and go back to recycling old "e-waste dumping" stories, the logins at African Universities and Colleges continue.

Africans know that "new" product is A) unaffordable, and B) unreliable.   When there is a high number of returns on millions of units at USA's Best Buy, WalMart, or Target, they yank the product.  Certain new electronics have 33% failure rate from electrostatic discharge.  Where do the bad batches, new in box, go?  When a Taiwanese factory gets its display units back for bad pixels counts, or electrostatic damage, or bad capacitors?

Africa.

Term Paper #3: Environmental Justice, a Little Drop of Poison

I'm going to put this up temporarily with a Tom Waits song (a little drop of poison) and then delete it in a few days.  It's below the fold...

Well a rat always knows when he's in with weasels...

1) Mining and smelting investments are driven away from property values;  they create most of the poison, species and habitat loss, carbon, etc.  It's an ugly business.  Most of the "harm" your computer will ever commit to the earth was done before you brought it home from the store and opened the box.

2) Labor value is found in high density in ghettos (lighter blue) and "emerging" neighborhoods.  It is a resource, and it is agnostic... it does not recognize whether metal is "Mined ore" or "Recycled Ore", and putting a label of "waste" onto urban ores has had unintended consequences.   In the past few years, the term "waste" has been abusively applied to material which is "in surplus" in one geographic location (e.g. working CRT monitors) and sold, added value intact, to a market where the goods are not in surplus.  An alien would not understand how recycled metal is regulated differently from virgin metal, the wealth or nationality of the previous scrap metal owner would be undetectable.

But the alien de Tocqueville would be able to see material moving around, and see the economic value of the property that people were living in, and see the regulatory functions were associated with property value.

The Spock de Tocqueville would observe People trying to feed their siblings hungry kids will do a lot of things.  "Useless Lists of Jobs Beneath Wealthy People" and "E-Waste Poster Child" blogs were my attempts to treat people doing "e-waste", primitively or immaculately, in a position as an equal.

Below is a chart which I have trouble fitting here, but it's my attempt to show the jobs people have moving value and creating value out of the various land value areas.

If you follow the movement of material and value through the digestive system of adolescent nations, you learn that the free market has a lot of environmental credit.

Term Paper II: "e-Waste" Export, Geography of Environmental Justice

Yesterday's thesis about the relationship between land value, environmental enforcement, and pollution, used a map from http://scorecard.goodguide.com/env-releases/land/,  showing toxic release sites on a map of the USA, and a chart from the same website showing the relative amount of toxics generated in specific localities.  When the releases are charted as "an occurance" and each release is given a single data point, the map shows the "superfund sites" to be concentrated in urban areas.

The sites, when weighted by actual tons of pollutions, are 83.75% in the top 20 / 100 sites (suggesting the 80/20 rule or Paretto Principle may apply).  The top 10 sites are in Alaska, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Missouri (Doe Run area), and Orange Florida.  Each of these sites has a "drilldown" function for data at Scorecard.Goodguide.com  Orange County Florida, the one non-western, non-mining area on the top ten list, has a NASA, USA Department of Defense, WR Grace, Dupont, Department of Energy, Chevron industry, etc. on its list of "potentially responsible parties" for lagoon pollution.  The nine sites above it are raw material extraction industry sites, none of which, my thesis states, could function economically inside a high-property value area.

1.	NORTHWEST ARCTIC, AK	481,382,100
2.	HUMBOLDT, NV	350,591,683
3.	PINAL, AZ	248,792,746
4.	SALT LAKE, UT	138,824,328
5.	ELKO, NV	83,494,740
6.	GILA, AZ	57,220,938
7.	EUREKA, NV	43,572,135
8.	OWYHEE, ID	28,887,324
9.	REYNOLDS, MO	27,313,480
10.	ORANGE, FL	24,032,977

The enforcement and likelihood that a site is identified as a threat is proportionate to its proximity to a landholder complaining about it.  For this reason, the "superfund" target sites on the USA map above are concentrated around cities and population centers.  This "NIMBY" or "Not In My Back Yard" dynamic is part of a normal democracy.  The spotlight on "environmental justice" in the USA focused on the difference the likelihood of enforcement correlated to race of neighborhoods;  that's an overlyer, according to my thesis, for economics and property values.  As I pointed out in one of the Slums Blogs last spring, 5th Avenue in Manhattan had auto repair shops a hundred years ago... but these relocated to Queens because it's easier to do repair work on an area with lower property value.

The Diagram Below generalizes the relationship between property value, wealth, and awareness of pollution. People live in rural villages, forests, and plains, but their population density is lower, and enforcement of all types is less likely in these areas.

The difficulty or unlikelihood of an enforcement paradigm outside of a population center is why emerging market city-states like Hong Kong and Singapore are more likely to achieve OECD-like status sooner than an emerging market like Malaysia or Indonesia or Brazil... the most recent nations admitted entry into OECD have been small.   Large nations admitted to OECD tend to have gained entrance early on, because of their econmic power (like the USA).  The USA was admitted into OECD while the pollution in Orange County was occuring, but as one of the "founders" of the OECD, the USA benefitted from a simpler formula - wealthy and white.  Not even Japan was not on the first OECD list.

Term Paper on "e-Waste" Export and Geography of Environmental Justice

Thesis:   Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head... And wrote a thesis chapter in one sitting.

Regulatory burdens are primarily driven by property value.   People are mobile, but their investment in property is a non-liquid asset, and they will pay a lot to keep it from being polluted.  If it's federal land out west, or a jungle island like Borneo - not so much.    Borneo has more species and more "environment" to spoil, but the property values there make it easier to mine than a richer vein of ore on Long Island.

As wealthy neighborhoods have resources to worry about smaller and smaller cognitive risks, compliance with risk (e.g. toxics in air or wipe tests, employee safety standards) become more expensive in wealthy jurisdictions.  This provides incentives for markets to outsource, or purchase from, areas with lower property values and less regulatory oversight.

This phenomenon has been examined through a lens of "environmental justice" for two decades.  Groups of people who tend to live in less affluent neighborhoods tend to be less critical of local employers who tolerate these risks.  Whether the "disproportionate enforcement" of standards is based on race, income, or real estate value, it coincides with the opinions of neighbors.

In environmental risk, the "worst neighbors" are the industries with the highest toxics and workplace hazards. These are know to be metal mining.  Virgin ore extraction is strongly correlated with releases of mercury and lead.   The number one source of mercury in the USA is gold mining;  number two is silver mining.  The more valuable an end product, the higher the tolerance for pollution, but the farther the activity occurs from high property values.

During the past 50 years, this dynamic has led to the "most polluted places on earth" being located in the least accessible, lowest property values on earth.  Property value is known to be correlated with demand for the property, and remote property has less demand.

Kabwe Zambia has been named the most polluted place on earth (Time Magazine).

La Oroya, Peru is definitely in the running. (NY Times)

Even within the confines of the USA, the most toxic industries are found in the most remote places, usually on federally owned land (a private landowner is less likely to tolerate pollution than the public landowner).  Of the top ten most areas with the most toxic releases, the first eight are in remote areas.. and (according to Scorecard.goodguide.com TRI reports), the states with the most land covered by the General Mining Act of 1872 have the most toxic releases.

1.	NORTHWEST ARCTIC, AK	481,382,100
2.	HUMBOLDT, NV	350,591,683
3.	PINAL, AZ	248,792,746
4.	SALT LAKE, UT	138,824,328
5.	ELKO, NV	83,494,740
6.	GILA, AZ	57,220,938
7.	EUREKA, NV	43,572,135
8.	OWYHEE, ID	28,887,324
9.	REYNOLDS, MO	27,313,480
10.	ORANGE, FL	24,032,977

Calculated as a percent, the Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule) appears to apply.  The top twenty sites on the list of 100 are 83.75% of the total toxics:  The top 4 sites of the top 20 represent 73% of toxics.


Total Toxics Emitted (Top 10) 1,484,112,451

All Top 100 1,991,863,954
Top 10 of 100 74.51%
Top 4 of Top 20 73.11%
Top 20 of 100 83.75%


Yet spending on "Superfund Enforcement" is not correlated with the toxics... it's correlated to property value and population.  One has to wonder how many sites on federal lands haven't even been sampled... if a pound of mercury drops in the forest, and no regulator is there to detect it, it still makes pollution.



This data is USA only, but the trend (in my thesis) is that the more environmentally damaging or toxic a process (e.g. gold or silver mining), the further the extraction will be placed from property values and populations.   Property value correlates with population up to a certain point (Manhattan Apartment) and then declines (ghettos and slums) because the more income people have, the more personal space they can afford.

Fast income growth would be associated with increasing property values.

In this thesis, the "good enough market" will be a rapidly emerging city, with electricity and potential wifi (like 1990s Guangzhou and Lima Peru, Cairo and Jakarta in the 2000s).  There is a labor force here, but the percentage of that labor force engaged in scrap wouldn't account for the fact that nothing "e-waste" is being shipped to rural areas even lower on the evolutionary scale;  for that matter, the presence of e-waste in concentrations at Guiyu or Agbogbloshie (with proximity to Shenzhen or Accra, cities growing at a faster than average pace for their continents), and the absence of a proportionally similar concentration of E-waste in even poorer cities like Mogadishu or Port-au-Prince, would be best explained by the growth and value added and not by the economics of externalization of pollution.

Haiti is closer and poorer than Accra or Kuala Lumpur, but the prices offered for e-scrap are much higher in cities (see Alibaba or Recycle.net) which are growing.

This establishes a reverse normal curve.  The demand for "used goods" and "cheap displays" like CRT monitors is very low in Manhattan, rises in middle income markets earning $3000 per year, and then drops precipitously again in very poor cities.    Mining, in comparison, grows in direct proportion to poverty, the lower the income level and property values, the greater the potential investments in raw material extraction.  You find coltan mining and gold mining investments in jungles.  A single mine like the OK Tedi Copper Mine, in a single day, dwarfs the toxics created by all the aqua regia and wire burning in all the cities of the world for a year.  If you want to find cataclysmic environmental damage, look in the opposite direction of recycling and repair.

According to my thesis, it is therefore the perception of "waste" formed by rich cities in areas with high environmental enforcement (driven by property value) which has been projected onto middle income cities which are actually buying used goods for "good enough" purposes.  It is true that the middle income cities have lower wage and environmental standards than the rich cities, but the correlation is exaggerated if you can't replicate the business in an even poorer city.  This is an example of "cognitive risk" which is marketed to by corporate interests in planned obsolescence, anti-gray markets, and competition from contract manufacturers scaling into good enough market economies.

It is the relative inexperience in rich nations with extreme forms of poverty which cause us to conflate "good enough markets" with images of suffering.   We create artificial groupings like "non-OECD" which basically mean "not as rich as us".   It's like creating a term "not forest" to describe everything that is not a forest, grouping deserts, meadows, swamps, and tundra together into a single term.

There are many types of snow.

End of Part 1.

Popularity Cowards: We Prefer to Be Around Someone Who Cares

Mother Teresa in Calcutta Orphanage, holding future Tata Dealer

I was rereading the "Cognitive Risk:  EWaste Cell Phone Cancer!" blog from 2011.   I am kind of proud of it, its one that reached pretty high and could have wound up stuck in the weeds (like so many others in my "draft" box).

In this evolutionary brain "thought experiment", I put western civilization on the couch and explore how political movements - such as free trade or anti-globalization - take root.

Today's post is another "thought experiment", about how we have evolved to embrace both justice and mercy, and how that affects the way we hire or fire people.   I think it is good to be compassionate, but cowardly not to terminate when elephant extinction is at stake.

As a business person, I can identify something that is uncomfortable... the need to fire people who are not contributing.

As a parent, I prefer the coach who doesn't cut my kids from the team.

Here's where the rubber meets the road.  My generation was inspired by Jane Goodall, Jacques Cousteau, and Diane Fossey.  They made us feel empathy for weaker species, and to feel in our hearts a passion for earth's environmental diversity. The lure of empathy and critical thought is vital to our movement.

I felt the same heart-wrench when NYT journalist Jeffrey Gettleman wrote last week about the surging, militarized poaching of the African Elephant.  It stirred my passion, and my frustration.

Environmentalists are dropping the ball.  We are chasing e-waste and a war on reuse, and every time a dime of our attention is wasted on the fake story, we lose credibility.  We need to learn from our corporate species, and fire environmentalists who are misdirecting finite attention and money towards bogus hoaxes and myths of the harm and danger of reuse and recycling.

When I say I want to fire someone, I get a strange look from most of my friends who are also inspired by Goodall, Cousteau, and Fossey, and who feel genuine sympathy for the "E-Waste Poster Children".  I'm urged to balance and compromise, I'm told that "we wouldn't be here" if not for Basel Action Network and Greenpeace.   Well... I can say with 100% certainty I WOULD BE HERE.  I got here first, both to the movement for sustainable development of the southern hemisphere, and to recycling, and to reuse and repair, to exports, and to Africa.   And if someone has to tell BAN.org they are fired from the environmental movement, well might as well be me.

What is the balance between cooperation and conflict?  How do we shift a movement from mercy to justice without losing the empathy that brought the people we love to work with us?

Memorial Day: Fear and Greed, Part 3

There is a cynical expression in Africa, used in response to "fears of the rich".   Why worry about toxics which may kill me seven years from now, when there are so many things that may kill me today?

Just as there are Useless Lists of Jobs Beneath Wealthy People, there are fears and phobias that the emerging markets don't have on their list of priorities.  That can be an opportunity for exploitation.  Yesterday's post described how EPA's Environmental Justice team came on board to make sure that "a clean local environment" was a right for every American citizen.

I learned today about careers in actuarial science (CNN).  It's about the statistics of risk and benefit, which (those who know me, know) I attribute to most of my life success.  (Taking credit for good luck, others call it).  Wikipedia 2012.05.28

An actuary is a business professional who deals with the financial impact of risk and uncertainty. Actuaries provide expert assessments of financial security systems, with a focus on their complexity, their mathematics, and their mechanisms (Trowbridge 1989, p. 7).

Actuaries mathematically evaluate the likelihood of events and quantify the contingent outcomes in order to minimize losses, both emotional and financial, associated with uncertain undesirable events. Since many events, such as death, cannot be avoided, it is helpful to take measures to minimize their financial impact when they occur.

According to the article, actuaries are one of the most sought-after degree holders, with virtually 0% unemployment.   What I'm curious about is what a professional actuary would say about "recycling" and "reuse" endeavors, with their associated benefits and risks, in a developing nation?  

One of the saddest stories I remember from Peace Corps in Africa was a young woman who spent a year teaching farmers to cultivate fish ponds.  Her favorite and most apt farmer/student lost his 1 year old son, who drowned in the fish pond she helped to dig, and she quit the service and returned to California.  Perhaps an actuary would say that the protein in the diet is worth the risk, if you learn from the lost life and make the fish ponds a little safer.  (Yes, this is similar to the story of the boy I helped bury who drowned in his father's well.  Not digging wells is not an option.  I taught by twins to swim by the time they were two years old).

Unlike the Peace Corps volunteers, the villagers really don't have much of an option to move to San Francisco.  If they try illegal emigration, that has its own risks.  My best friend from Africa married my Peace Corps replacement and they moved to the USA.  He was a muslim who fell into drinking in the USA, lost his family, and has been in and out of prison.

Finding a scapegoat for the things that killed us today is rarely useful.  The amount of fear that we can realistically project onto something that may kill us seven years from now is also practically useless, unless we find a scapegoat to leverage... the answer to that "unless" depends on the wealth of the scapegoat.  The environmental justice and Stewardship philosophies may not be built upon this attraction to leveraged wealth... but they cannot help but be influenced by it.

We can blame ourselves, or government, for the fish ponds.   We can blame corporations for the stewardship of the toxics.  But like actuaries on a battlefield, the entrepreneurs I've met in slums and emerging markets don't wait around for someone to blame.  They find the most value they can, the smartest way that they can.  It's not waiting for a big multinational corporation to pay for a modern shredder.   It's not taking back an exhausted 1980s TV from Lagos for repair.  The best thing they can do is get a laptop which needs the fan cleaned, or a computer with a dead capacitor, and repair it, earning a months wages in forty five minutes.  It may be safer for the white volunteer's shiny conscience to escape that, or say they shouldn't have had to make that choice.   I didn't leave, and don't intend to.

When a risk is a consequence of trade, and the trade is a good or service between someone wealthy and someone poor, it might be about exploitation and it might be about race.   But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  The actuarial science of life for the developing world says that Foxconn and contract management and low wages are a better path out of the poorest ditch than the promises of Mao or Al Qaeda.  Having a boss sucks.  But having a fair boss, or a good trading partner, doesn't suck nearly as much.

Memorial Day: Fear and Greed Part 1

The more I try to crystallize the issue in this blog, the more it is about trade and exchange between rich and poor.  The exchange is a value, and the fear of exploitation is a value.  Some make their value in the margins of exchanges they make, others make their money through their authority over those transactions.

Whether we draw two big circles on a map and call them "OECD and non-OECD", or seven circles for continents, or 193 nations, or circles which show cities and peasants in those countries, or draw lines within a city between the high property values and the ghettos, it's ultimately about the transfer of wealth and value.   When a rich man employs a poor man, or a poor man buys something from a rich person, or a daughter marries across an economic line, opinions and suspicions sharpen.

Is trade between wealthy and poor exploitation, or opportunity?  Who is the authority or referee?

Jim Puckett says in his interviews in CBS 60 Minutes and Frontline that the deck is stacked against the poor in any exchange.  The economic have-nots will be abused and worse off due to the trade of second hand goods.  This line of thinking has some friendly listeners in the "environmental justice" arena, and the anti-globalization movement of Seattle.

I was a critic of how the USA's most toxic industry - hard rock non-ferrous mining - moved to rain forests where no one complains about the cyanide, mercury, and other toxic runoff.  Those concerns brought me into the recycling field, in fact.  And here I am in a battle of wits with a fellow environmentalist over how our raw material policy should play out worldwide.

My concerns about hard rock mining, however, were never pinned on a false hope of economic segregation.  Boycotting and segregating people we are uncomfortable or uncertain about has led to many "trail of tears", and many burned bridges.  Doing the right thing means doing something, but it isn't to throw a garbage can through the collective window of the recycling industry.  Fair trade makes more sense, and is not something Basel Action Network should try to make people afraid of.

Tech, Toxics, and Ju-Ju:  Leverage fear, create authority

In his editorial response to my first widely published column, "We Shouldn't Have to Make that Choice" (reprinted in E-Scrap in 2009), Jim Puckett said that he didn't think Fair Trade meant "poisoning people".   Toxics is a scare word.  Jim was clearly trying to make people afraid of the economic exchange.   He tells people that replacing or upgrading a part is hazardous, toxic, polluting.  He knows he's wrong, he just doesn't recognize why he's doing it. It is not, as he claimed, about a "loophole" of reuse.  If it's resolved, his authority diminishes, and he's not ready to retire.

Create concern, especially visceral concern (photos of children).  Promote yourself as an authority to reduce this concern. Sell certification.   Profit!

You do not create "environmental justice" by creating a vacuum or boycott of trade.  Justice is, by definition, a judgement call, a negotiation, and a settlement.   You do not stop exploitation by labeling people and segregating them.