Forget the Word E-Waste: World Bank's "Critical Mass of Users"

Here is a link to just one very interesting World Bank metadata paper...

Ghana Country Study: A roadmap for the strategic application of information and communication technology (2011)  

Report prepared for the World Bank by 'Balancing Act'.

It explains something I observed in Cairo.   Before an internet utility wants to invest in providing internet, it requires a "Critical Mass of Users".   You can't build cell phone towers if no one has a phone.   Unless you have the Tennessee Valley Authority (USA project to provide electricity in areas people lacked critical mass) or Marshall Plan, you depend on the "Good Enough Market".   The "GEM" is the definition for basically affordable goods that function well enough.   A 17" CRT monitor sold in Cairo for $21 will be available to 1,000 times more people than a $400 new flat monitor.  It is the 1,000 people who own the $21 CRT monitor which make it possible for private enterprise to run internet cable or sell satellite dishes.  It takes 1,000 people with the $20 used cell phone to make it possible to provide enough cell phone towers that people can talk to each other.

Agbogbloshie (the red dot below) is a tiny neighborhood in a very big city (Accra) which has hospitals and highways and factories and universities and TV towers and radio stations and nearly universal access to cell phones.  The World Bank is concerned with the entirety of the economy below.   And there are scads of newly published Metadata now public at World Bank.   You don't need to narrow your view to Mike Anane, Greenpeace, Jim Puckett, Kyle Wiens and SkyNews images of burning wires.  There is a massive, massive city here, and as Hans Rosling showed us, the news is mostly good.

I'm advising everyone to get outside of the word "e-waste", the very word has a fetish attached to it which I believe has created fear and group-think.  Look at the photos of the Green Advocacy report below.   While the reports show 85-91% reuse of imports to Ghana and Nigeria, better than new product, the report is decorated with photos of "poverty" and "pollution".  It is a mindset around the words "e-waste", even people telling good news feel obligated to take pictures of poverty to prove they were in the same place as the other e-waste reporters.

Put Yourself In the World's Shoes

I got some positive feedback on the slide I put up two days ago (from my "Fair Trade Recycling" presentation, which has been given at CES and Colleges in 3 countries during the past 6 months).

Here are a couple of other slides from the same presentation.

The first shows the relative size of the market for computer displays.  People earning $3K-12K per year are getting online at 10 times the rate of growth of wealthy nations since 2001.  But the "boycott the poor" advocates shows pictures of primitive dumpsites to describe 6 billion people.

And even the poorest of the poor deserve a bit of a break.  Recycling isn't THAT bad a job for the very poorest people in the world.  If we control the three worst practices - burning wire (little of which comes from computers anyway, that will not be affected by the HR2284 boycott), dumping broken CRTs, and aqua regia acid baths for circuit boards (another rarity), then recycling stacks up pretty well with other choices - like sex worker, miner, Somali pirate, child soldier, etc.

The term "parasites of the poor" and "accidental racist" are a little tough.  But the longer this stupid idea of boycotting poor people and shredding metals into smaller un-fixable pieces goes on (without any intelligent comment or response to people like me), the louder I have to get.

4 E-Waste Categories (Taiwanese Geeks Are Awesome)

Another Hypothesis:  There were basically Four Types of USA Computer Monitor / Electronics Recycling in the decade past:

1. Honest companies with under 5% reuse.  They don't do the homework on the testing and reuse market, they shred everything ("good idiots")
2. Companies that ship for refurb off-site, like mine, which achieve 25% reuse and are proud of it.  (honest and good)
3. Companies that ship for refurb off-site, like mine, which achieve 25% reuse, and claim testing and everything is done in the USA ("good liars")
4. Companies that ship enough good stuff that the export market forgives the crap, allowing them to ship 65% overseas... (bad exporters)

Inventor of Chinese character display from CRT

California was an example of Good Idiots.  There was little incentive to export good monitors to good companies when California taxpayers were shellling out 48 cents per pound to break them into pieces to put on the ground. 

There were companies I know of that were maximizing "TAR" or Toxics Along for the Ride.  They were willing to earn less for the good monitors in return for forcing along TVs and bad monitors.   I knew about them from the Taiwanese buyers.  Some of the worst exporters were - get this - Pledge of True Stewardship Signers!

The majority of e-waste recyclers in the past decade - About 50% of companies - were doing what I was doing (#2 and #3)...  The number who were transparent and proud began shrinking under BAN's scorched earth campaign vs. reuse.  And the buyers, who I visited and met with, were teaching me just about everything I know about display reuse and recycling.  I go to Africa as the "American expert" and talk about things I learned in China.

The Taiwanese were the earliest investors in Guangdong.  They have been enormously helpful in Mexico, South America, and Africa.  I keep running into Taipei Geeks all over the world, and they deserve a huge shout out.  Anyone who says "manufacturer takeback" and describes Taiwan as Guiyu is a certified laughingstock.