Part 2: How (too) Quietly The E-Waste Big Lies Are Buried.

 Ok, here's a short but important point about the Basel Convention, and the press releases (like today's from Basel Action Network) that seek to expand it to cover normal non-toxic secondary raw materials like plastic, ROHS compliant circuit boards, and even secondhand reuse.

#FLOWCONTROL

"Non-OECD" meant one thing in 1960 when the (all white country) OECD was assembled (Japan was an afterthought).  "Non-OECD" meant a completely different thing in the mid-1980s when the Basel Convention sought to keep pollution abatement costs / regulations in OECD nations from being subverted through international dumping (like the Trafigura toxic waste scandal of 2006).

"Non-OECD" is, today, a caricature of 72% of the whole world. It's a post-colonial era systemic system of flow control that has been used by Western Nations to try to keep their Big Shred companies from competing against what is now the MAJORITY of manufacturing capacity.

Fair Trade Recycling "EWaste Offset" Program: 8 Steps Forward, 3 Steps Back, 4 Marching in Place

We launched the FTR E-Waste Offset Program from Ghana, Africa, through this blog in 2017.  Time for an update on how the program evolved.

Briefly, here are highlights of our progress.

1) We initially had a firm quote from Camacho in Spain to take back full loads of CRT televisions, ones that had been imported in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, at an extremely competitive cost... under $5k including shipping. This would have been very easy to finance with the discounts on sale of current reuse shipments.

2) Camacho needed a letter from the Ghana EPA allowing the "waste" TVs to be shipped to Spain... a demand from the Spain EPA. Turns out that was foreshadowing friction with Spain EPA that would lead to Camacho closing their purchase orders not only for Africa, but for USA as well.

3) WR3A hired an intern from Antioch University in NH, John Sumani of Wa, north Ghana. Sumani was getting his Ph.D and had previously worked at Ghana EPA. It took him about 3 months to get the requested letter (working with WebElement, a formal sector recycler in Ghana). But by the time they got the letter, Camacho's offer had vanished.

continued...