SEERA, HR 917 - A New Protectionist Message?

First let me say that there are several paying members of the Coalition for American Electronics Recycling (CAER) who I really respect.  We use several of them as subcontractors for our company. (My hunch is that they wouldn't want to be thanked here individually).

They haven't reached out to me directly, but appear to have taken serious note of admonishment on the blog.  They have dropped references to the "80% Dumping" claim (which was still on their website after Basel Action Network disavowed it).

The "perception - reality" logo, featuring the African guy carring a 1977 white Magnavox at Agbogbloshie is gone from the website.  "Primitive" Africans no longer feature in the press releases for the legislation that CAER was formed to promote...

But their interest is the same as any other heavy industry.  "Big Shred" are the companies with multi-million dollar investments in big heavy machines to automate electronics recycling.

Cultural Gulfs in Developing Markets #4: Just the Facts M'am

Why did Africans, Latin Americans, Mid Easterners, and Asians purchase used computer monitors between 1995 and 2010?  Because marketplaces (mostly urban, where electric grids develop first) earning $3,000 per person per year constitute most of the growth in Media Consumption (internet, TV, and cell phones).   The measure of cultural gulfs is streaming music.  Here is an analysis of photos shown in the Guardian, examined under the light of facts about computer displays.

From 2004 to 2012, Ghana's number of internet users increased tenfold from 1.7 to 17 (per 100 residents).  As a percentage of world GDP, Ghana improved, but still remains a work in progress.  Poverty levels remained at 28.5% the year before 2007, when the internet exploded in Ghana. But that was a reduction by half (from 51.7% poverty in 1992 to 28.5% in 2006), and progress must be recognized.     

2006 was when Jim Puckett and I met over export policy in Africa.  It was still an amicable relationship then, and I was very polite in the back and forth with NIH author Charles Schmidt (Unfair Trade E-Waste in Africa) that year.  Eight years later, a lot of data has surfaced, but in the Western Press, the song remains the same.  From The Guardian (2/27/2014), "Agbogbloshie:  the world's largest e-waste dump - in pictures" circulated the Twittersphere.

Exoticization of rag picking, at its finest.  "Other-ization" as my wife (a Francophone African Studies professor at Middlebury College) describes it.

"Largest E-Waste Dump in the World" - Accidental racism at The Guardian?  or just sloppy?

As it turns out, that @Guardian story came out the day after Good Point Recycling's head technician, Eric Prempeh, returned to his home country of Ghana for three weeks of family reunions, and a side helping of research on the state of electronics reuse and repair.  How will the Guardian's portrayal of African recyclers in "primitive spear-handling poses" compare with a professional technician's findings?

E-Scrap News 2/28/2013 |
Good Point Recycling of Middlebury, Vermont announced one of its technicians is headed to controversial e-scrap hotspot Ghana to try to help determine how much of the material dumped at crude processing sites there is actually imported from outside Africa. Eric Prempeh, the technician, is originally from Ghana and will be back in his native country for three weeks. Good Point Recycling is associated with Fair Trade Recycling, an effort that aims to promote responsible export of used electronics so that the technology can benefit individuals in developing nations. 

I've been somewhat guilty of fighting fire with fire.    Emotionalized responses to the Basel Action Network's depiction of Geeks of Color were, in no small part, out of the guilt I feel.  I was wrong for handling Jim with kid gloves in the Charles Schmidt interview.  Letting Jim ride roughshod resulted in the arrests of "Hurricane" technicians like Hamdy Mousa and Joe Benson.  It was the beginning of a firehose of disinformation in support of planned obsolescence, and "big shred".  The #ewaste hoax campaign was directed against smart people emerging from poverty.   With skills and brains, these geeks of color were supplying products for the "good enough market".  For E-Stewards "certification" payments, thirty pieces of silver, BAN.org sold Big Shred a story against the reuse competitors.   BAN successfully monetized the hyperbole.  It's my fault. 

Yep, it's my moral responsibility to be mad about environmental malpractice.  However, ranting isn't music to many peoples ears.

Reporting Neither Policy

Why there should be no "recycling policy" and no "mining policy".   

There should only be a "raw material policy".  

In a recent Slashdot.org essay, commenters bemoan the fact that national dialogue is increasingly polarized, and "lacks nuance".   I contributed the following in response to the essay, "Edward Snowden and the Death of Nuance" by Dennis Fisher.  (Snowden and NSA debate is to Slashdot what Michael Jackson was to National Enquirer, or Michael Jordan was to Sports Illustrated).

"I'm from 3 generations of journalists, and part of the problem is that news outlets need to a) attract readers (make it interesting and simple), and b) are trying to cover stories that are frankly out of the reporters depth and comfort zone. Reporters want to cover both sides of an issue, and the easiest way to do that is to find two sources who disagree strongly... Opposite + Opposite = "fair and balanced". When "long form journalism" is proposed as an antidote, we still suffer from weak audience attention spans and excuses for writing prose that lacks punch, or remains lazy-sourced.

"This, in turn, rewards "experts" who take a polarized view. If your expertise provides nuance, you have to compete for the reporter's attention. So much easier for reporters to submit black-and-white points of view. Often reporters tell me they are afraid NOT to interview loud and ignorant people out of fear of "not having covered their side".

"In my particular field (electronics scrap policy) I've tried to interest reporters in identifying victims of policies which lack nuance - a "derivative" of the story which fits the black-and-white reporting model. The "victimhood" of un-nuanced policy can sometimes trigger "blame" and "innocent or guilty" coverage paradigm. I realize too that it's not the reporters fault that readers/audience response to nuanced articles is "Whoosh". "Whoosh" doesn't sell papers and tv ads. I fear this is causing erosion of even stronger news sources (The Economist, WSJ, NYT, etc)."   Read the 180 comments

After I hit submit, I was bugged by my reference to "Electronic Scrap Policy".  It has become an "export vs. non-export" policy, largely, or a manual disassembly vs. shredder debate, or a repair vs. obsolescence debate.    Victimhood triggers the "nurture and underdog" responses among readers and reporters alike, and to make any of these points of view "newsworthy", we are all scavenging for victims.

Broken Arrow 2: The "mean" of all opinions (Why We Are Trolls)

Before I set out on the posts "Broken Arrow", about how my company has to make some deals under the onslaught of so-called E-Stewards and BAN-friendly state regulators, I have to find some zen.  The "ugly sandcastle" blog last weekend (post-titled "Broken Arrow 1") is an apt analogy.  Shutting down our exports to Egypt or Malaysia or Peru or Africa isn't that big a deal.   It's not the beauty or necessity of the sandcastle, it's the value of the experience building it together with people you care about.

And that's something intensely personal, something I'm prone to feel too passionately about.   And people mistake that for caring about the sandcastle.

I want the right to build sandcastles with my kids, and the right to trade with "geeks of color", even when the sandcastles fall and the repaired and working units eventually become waste.

I don't like the fact that expensive "new" sandcastles, mined from Congo conflict metals, are sold to people with fewer choices, who can't afford them.   Those "new" and "fully functional" units crumble just as much as sustainable used refurbished sandcastles do.  I don't like planned obsolescence, or laws banning the "right to repair", even if all technology, and all companies, are like sandcastles.

But time should give us a prospective that protects us from lashing out and "trolling the internet" with vitriolic comments.  Blogs included.

(AT least check out the photo below, it's a treasure of obsolescence)

History and Future: Reuse of Chips Without Fire

Readers may recall that a journalist confirmed one of my theses about Guiyu, China.  There had to be something else going on besides "aqua regia" (using acid to recover gold), or it would not be financially viable for Guiyu to import PCs.  Sure enough, similar to the cell phone chip reuse documented at TechTravels, there was chip harvesting and reuse going on.  That's a huge savings compared to mining.

The river in Guiyu is polluted from textile dying mills in the area, but we don't want to understate the pollution coming from circuit board residuals.   It can be pretty nasty.

You could almost make the case that Guiyu is internalizing the pollution that is being diverted from the mining communities, i.e. make the case for Chinese altruism. But can fair trade recycling find a way to incentivize Guiyu to maintain chip harvesting and reuse without shouldering the pollution of the residuals?

Circuits that come apart in water may allow the chips to be reused more safely.

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL), along with partners In2Tec Ltd (UK) and Gwent Electronic Materials Ltd, have developed a printed circuit board (PCB) whose components can be easily separated by immersion in hot water. The work was part of the ReUSE project, funded by the UK government's Technology Strategy Board.

Recyclable electronics: just add hot water

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL), along with partners In2Tec Ltd (UK) and Gwent Electronic Materials Ltd, have developed a printed circuit board (PCB) whose components can be easily separated by immersion in hot water. The work was part of the ReUSE project, funded by the UK government's Technology Strategy Board.

Recycling this printed circuit board is as easy as
making a cup of tea - simply add hot water, and
the bonding material dissolves away leaving you
with 90% of your components to re-use as you wish

The Challenge

The electronics industry has a waste problem - currently over 100 million electronic units are discarded annually in the UK alone, making it one of the fastest growing waste streams.

It was estimated in a DTI-funded report, that around 85% of all PCB scrap board waste goes to landfill. Around 70% of this being of non-metallic content with little opportunity for recycling. This amounts to around 1 million tonnes in the UK annually equivalent to 81 x HMS Belfasts.

The Solution

The aim of the ReUSE (Reuseable, Unzippable, Sustainable Electronics) project was to increase the recyclability of electronic assemblies, in order to avoid an ever-growing volume of waste.

The project partners designed, developed and tested a series of unzippable polymeric layers which, while withstanding prolonged thermal cycling and damp heat stressing, allow the assemblies to be easily separated at end-of-life into their constituent parts, after immersion in hot water.

Bad Statistics: The Jumping Off Point for E-Waste

Well, since EPA and Basel Secretariat won't defend themselves from the bully in Seattle, it seems to fall on me to defend sanity.   Should poor people be allowed to accept donations from, and do business, with well meaning rich people?   My answer is yes.   HR2284 says no, and makes that opinion law.

Using Halloway (post yesterday) as a jumping off point, let's look at all the assumptions for the case banning trade in used electronics between rich nations and poor.

They keep saying 80-90% of electronics exported are burned in horrific condtions.

" ..it has been widely reported that 90 percent of the USA's e-waste ends up in either China or Nigeria—a figure that appears to originate from an estimate made by Jim Puckett, Director of the Basel Action Network. "

It has been widely reported, indeed.   The figure "appears to originate" from Basel Action Network.  Basel Action Network credits the statistic from a 2002 interview they did with my buddy Mike at DMC.   My buddy Mike says, via this blog, that he was including ALL exports - clean baled steel, demanufactured copper, aluminum, plastic - everything that comes out of electronics.  And he meant exports to Europe (printed circuit boards) as well.

The actual studies with actual data show an imperfect but rational marketplace.  85% of used electronics imported into Africa are working or repaired.  The other statistic is that MOST Africans can only afford a used device - for now.  China has a plan to change that.


African business people can't afford to pay $10 to ship an item worth $3.52 in scrap.   BAN says that a good unit would pay for the transport of the bad units... but that's only if the African Geek is willing to donate his share of the profits to disposing YOUR junk.  Meaning he would have to charge you, or lose his money.  The more rational step is for the African to be very careful about picking and choosing items he can repair and reuse.


- The goods from the USA are mostly good.
- The bads at the dump are mostly generated over there (after decades of reuse).
- The mostly good were mostly purchased at thrift and second hand shops in the USA/EU
- China and other rapidly-ermerging nations are a new source of cheap and "gently used" goods


The question for China and USA is, how do we make money selling into this market?  Do we resell our used cars and electronics for their best value, giving us an incentive to take care of them?  Or do we just withdraw, to keep our consciences shiny and our Goodwills and Salvation Armies beyond the reproach of export markets?  Because THAT's where the Africans (and Haitians, and South Americans) buy from, the used goods marketplaces in USA and Europe.  And the number of "rich" people (used goods owners) doubles each year - and they are cropping up everywhere.


Salvation Army and Goodwill have competition.  Not just from for-profits like Savers and eBay.  The used goods market is growing as the world economy grows.   New consumers are created as wifi and electric cable wrangles its way into the slums, and as slumdogs become middle class, they generate their own used display devices, laptops, and cell phones.  The cup of used goods runneth over.  But the solution is not to ban the poorest from getting the leftovers.

Basel Action Network Awarded Title, Cash, Prizes

[Seattle, WA: April 1, 2012]  A hero's welcome was unveiled for an environmental watchdog group, to recap 10 years of efforts to reduce toxics, enforce international law, and close loopholes for dumping of used surplus electronics, or "e-waste".   The award recognized efforts of a USA NGO to represent unsuspecting victims in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Basel Action Network, of Seattle Washington, dedicated its award to struggling Africans in emerging markets.  These small African businesspeople, who spend hundreds of millions of African dollars on used computers, find out many years later that the goods they imported and use are actually "e-waste".

The "Environmental Revolutionary Steward" award was presented by Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Basel Action Network's leader James Puckett arrived by helicopter from his private first class Paul Gaughin Cruise Ship onto a red carpet at a military ceremony at CenturyLink Field.

Puckett approached the podium to a standing ovation by military rulers from a dozen nations.  He accepted the award as well as a check for 1% of the proceeds of customs fees seized for every container of used computers stopped at the ports in Tripoli, Alexandria, and other "developing world" ports.

Only Outlaws Will Export Computers

President Ahmadinejad held the E-Waste trophy high over his shoulders.  He called the BAN organization the "Real heroes" of the "Pledge of True Green Revolution", and the "Stewards of Stability".   This is the first time Ahmadinejad has used the term "green revolution", a term previously banned from use in Tehran.

Each of the generals and dignitaries joined Puckett to decry the pollution and toxic risks from the use of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Google+, Orkut, Stumbledupon, etc.

"Ok, Revolution 2.0 is over.  Revolution 3.0 has now returned things 180 degrees, prior to all of this Kaleed Said nonesense," said Saadi Gaddafi Qaddafy Kwadafee, the billionaire football star and playboy son of deposed Colonel Omar Quadafi of Libya.

Prepared for used cell phone fixer lab raids

"We will not have our children exposed to computer viruses, or poisoned by toxic fumes from affordable computers," said Bashar al-Assad, leader of Syria.  "Used PCs pollute our young brains with pornographic images of democracy."

The "E-Steward Award" recognizes the efforts of European, American, South Korean, or Japanese recyclers who shred the highest percentage of used electronics, or close the doors of affordable "white box" refurbishing factories.

"Good enough technology is not good enough for Africa," said Husni Mubarek, via a Skype call covered on the stadium megastream.  A chant of "Good enough is not good enough" ensued from the green-uniformed military battalion at center stage.


"Appropriate technology is completely inappropriate," said deposed Tunisian president-for-second-life Zine al-Abadine Ben Ali.

Egypt's Revolution Profiled - Wolman, Stewardship miss 'ewaste' role

DAVID WOLMAN - David Wolman is a contributing editor at Wired, a former Fulbright journalism fellow and a winner of the 2011 Oregon Arts Commission individual artists fellowship. His third book is The End of Money.  (The Atlantic, May 4, 2011)


Wolman's new book, The Instigators, follows how Revolution 2.0 came to a head, and how online and Wired activists were able to communicate and sell the democracy on the Arab street.


I have sent a note to Wolman (though these never seem to get anywhere) suggesting that he go back a little further in his timeline.   As I've said many times, the revolution did not happen on Ipads and Android phones.   Vermont had a role in exporting about 30,000 affordable used computers to Egypt between 2002 and 2008.  In 2008, the Egyptian customs seized $80,000 worth of P4s in three sea containers, and our direct trade was broken.

Two years later, Jim Puckett of BAN was applauding the Egyptians classification of any computer manufactured more than 3 years earlier (i.e., costing less than half your annual salary) was illegal "e-waste", working or not.  The CRT display devices, which are good for 20 years, were banned.


But Mubarak could not put the Genie back in the bottle.  (photos below)  The efforts to "profile" geeks of color as polluters, as terrorists, as primitives, went down in the 9th round.

Wait 15 Seconds, Walk 5 Meters

If you don't like the recycling you see in the non-OECD nations (about 6 billion people), look elsewhere.  "Elsewhere" within the non-OECD is an incredibly sophisticated, layered, textured market.  Wait fifteen seconds, walk five meters, and you will see something or someone completely different.

Cameroon has changed since I lived there in the 80s.   Douala (the port city and economic capital) has just been "wired" by high speed optic, as of December 12... Cameroun's first "smart city".

Aya Heroines Rising

Meanwhile, the level of suspicion raised by anti-export groups has risen to comic book proportions.  There is a huge campaign, backed by nanny-NGOs, planned obsolescence, and heavy shredding investors, dedicated to preserving decade old images of children in puddles of filth.  They want us all to believe there is no convergence, that 6 billion people are moving backward, away from the OECD.

If you actually work with the geeks and the techs, you see that the world is developing in positive ways, faster than believed  possible.  Yes, there are child soldiers, there are terrorists, there are Somali pirates, there is disease, and there is poverty.  But the tide is rising, not falling.  And the seed is the same as in Singapore and Japan - Geeks and Tinkerers, Fixers, and Techs.