What $20,000 Means: Blog to Sasha Rainbow, Brian Molko, Stefan Olsdal, @PlaceboWorld

Dear Directors, Producers, and Stars of the Music Video "Life Is What You Make It",

About two weeks ago, I ran across the release of your new Placebo music video through my organization, Fair Trade Recycling / WR3A, which researches public posts on Agbogbloshie.  Despite recognizing some of Placebo's hits from the past two decades, I admit I was not at all acquainted with the artists.  Over the course of 2 weeks, I've developed a much greater appreciation for not just the art, but the social justice that Brian and others with the band strive for.





I know a lot more about African recycling than I know about music.  I've been to Abgogbloshie and Old Fadama several times with our members from Tamale, Ghana.  We have translated for or been interviewed by several documentary and print journalism investigations on so-called e-waste dumping in Africa.  Here are 4 good articles and films on the topic of export.

3Sat
Aljazeera
Smithsonian
SciDev

But let me explain how we can work together to create clean and sustainable recycling jobs for the "workers of Agbogbloshie".  There's a win-win here, and there are plenty of other people besides me you can go through if I've tarnished the relationship by introducing the subject.  ("Alright then, I'll go to hell," often starts here).

Bullyboy 6: Eden is Not On Our Map

Fair Trade Recycling.   Our vision is not the same, perhaps, as Basel Action Network, or the "Back to Eden" program of Interpol.  Arresting dozens of Africans and seizing thousands of "good enough" televisions and monitors, purchased for repair and resale, will not get us where we are going.

Where are we going?  According to the Economist, to the end of poverty.  The world population is making the same progress as the United States made, in standard of living, for the past 100 years.

Nearly 1 billion people have left poverty in 20 years.

In "Towards the End of Poverty", the Economist shows how at this rate, another billion will leave poverty in a decade.

This  is our vision.  Africans with television, barios with high speed internet, rice fields with smart phones.  Yes, that means they will "generate e-waste", just as we did/do.  But "Back to Eden" isn't on our Map.

The Economist Gets It: Modern Slum Nariobi

Early in 2012, I wrote about the "pixelized slums" in Lima Peru, from the inside, and showed the OECD slums (Mexico, Japan) from the satellite beside the non-OECD slums in Delhi (Useless Lists of Jobs Beneath Wealthy People).

In its expose on Nairobi (where Fair Trade Recycling sent 3 representatives to a UNEP conference last March), the Economist gives readers a taste of entrepreneurism, rich and salty, in the free markets of Africa's largest shantytown.  "Upwardly Mobile Africa: Boomtown Slum"has incredible photos by Piers Benatar/Panos, taking us inside "a day in the economic life of Africa's biggest shanty-town."

Piers Bneatar photo of private ambulance entrepreneurs in Nairobi (Economist.com) Fair Use/ description

It's easy to take a photo in a tough part of town and use it to simplify a continent.  The Economist takes lots of different photos, not seeking to prove an a priori angle, but to bring us closer to understanding the complex.

The Economist shows an exploding fresco of creativity, of nuance, of good-enough affordability, of people living so close side by side one another that they have a communal interest in peace.  And up close, we see the same seeds of economy that hatched in Franklin's Philadelphia, in Gou's Taipei, in Tokyo and Seoul...