We would be heartless to ignore the images. Poor child workers, huddled over fires, stoked with the coals of yesterday's technology. As westerners spend more and more lavishly on shiny smart phones, flat screens, and tablets, with the world's wiki-media at our fingertips, it seems apt to pause and think about the impact of the wealthy's consumption on the planet's resources, and of the worlds poor, left seemingly farther and farther below us, inside a muddy pit of toxic fumes.
Photographers like
Pieter Hugo capture the wet irritation in the eyes of the black teenager. Filmmakers like David Fedele slowly let the reel turn and record the images of kids trying to make a living off of the scraps of electronics once imported into their cities.
Cairo, Lagos, and Accra, the
megalopoleis of urban growth, stream with cell towers and internet today. But the poor just outside those cities, at their unlined, unregulated, unspoken dumps, seem to stretch their arms out of a moat. Their slow effort to climb out of poverty, through urban mining, makes Europeans and Americans feel guilty, ashamed of our wealth. Reminded of these
"poster child" recycling workers, seemingly without even boots to lift as they climb, we want to check a box. We want to say we are certified. We want to pass a law, a ban, to address the unfamiliar black faces hauling too familiar CRT televisions, VCRs, and refrigerators. To say we have done our part for Africa and change the topic. Turn the page, please, make the images go away.
There are indeed many important topics in the so-called "third world".
- Endangered species poaching.
- Sex trade.
- Toxic alleuvial gold mining.
- Blood minerals.
- Crime.
- Despotism.
- Child soldiers.
How much of our time should we devote to "e-waste"? Where does it belong on this list?
"The Waste Makers" by Vance Packard