Everyone Misunderstands China / Global Recycling Chains (#WSJ)

Wall Street Journal and others are running stories about the crash in recycling prices due to China's new import restrictions.  There is a grain of truth to the story, but there is so much more going on that I have to issue a quick explanation [US Recycling Companies Face Upheaval from China Scrap Ban].

It has little to do with the sentiment in China over "western garbage". That trite little meme is everywhere on Twitter.  It's something else entirely.

"IT'S THE MINING STUPID"

(AND FORESTRY, OCEAN BED EXTRACTION, AND CRUDE OIL REFINING)

Instead of Reading About E-Waste, Read Something Important

The Price of Precious, by Jeffrey Gettleman, will shock you back to the reality between Tinkerer's Blessing and Curse of Natural Resources.

"The first child soldier pops out of the bush clutching an AK-47 assault rifle..."

The article is about the "wild eastern edge" of the Congo... an area near Bukavu, where I spent my first weeks in Africa in the summer of 1984.   I've been a fan of Gettleman's for several years, ranking him with Fareed Zakaria and Tom Friedman as mainstream reporters who "get it".

It's the mining, stupid.

Nothing I've written below here is as important or as well written, or as insightful as the National Geographic article.  I urge you not to read further.

The article is profoundly sad.  But its also sad to me that I began this trek into reuse and recycling "e-waste" from the very same ground as Gettleman walks, eastern Congo, Rwanda and Uganda border zones... a frequent theme, and digression, in the blog.

more???...