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...

Blogger V. Twitter - Recycling News Happens Fast [StormX]

There are two reasons why the number of Good Point Ideas blog posts has declined in the past 24 months.

The first relates to an increase in use of Twitter. As I noted 5 years ago, Twitter is misunderstood as a "squawking box". Sure, there's lots of inane squawking on Twitter. But the most important thing on the Twitter site is in the top right hand... the Search Box.

"Following" a thousand people is pretty impossible. I trim it down with a FairTradeRecycling list of twitter posters I follow more closely. But it is the "saved search term" feature that we need to pay attention to. It allows you to get an early scoop... and if it turns out to be clickbait, it's only 160 characters or whatever.

So ten years ago, the incredible idea below would have been subject of a blog, which would take me 45 minutes to write (and if readers are lucky, another hour to re-edit).  Now I post it bam on Twitter.

Storm Water Trash Catch Nets

I saw this on a repost from an old pal Wim Roskam on Facebook, who in turn found it on Architecture and Designs rather cool Facebook page.  The problem with stormwater carried litter is obvious if you've been to an African city like Accra, Lagos, Dakar or Douala.  The litter on the beaches is depressing and ubiquitous, and no amount of white savior plastic straw abstinence is going to save the sea creatures there.

STORMX is the license holder (image above is from North American licensee StormWaterSystems.com). The net baggies allow water to run through, but catch the debris... which is the actual culprit of urban flooding - falsely blamed on scrappers of Agbogbloshie 40 months ago. 2015 was the same year that Twitter helped a youtube video of a turtle with a straw stuck in its nose go viral... which led to a LOT of journalist ink going into the plastic straw bans.

Grasping At Straws: The Net Liability of Extraction

Let's assume that people without a sense of environmental conscience don't spend time on this blog. Longtime readers know that I'm in recycling because of "religious" or "philosophical" experiences I had in the 1970s. In distilling the ethos of hippies and hillbillies (elderly god-fearing folks I also admire), I might have coined a term "Agent of Conscience".

Time to "recalculate the route" of environmental strategy. We know that we need people who care, and we know that it needs to be science based. We hope to develop cures for planet health the way western medicine cured smallpox and polio. And borrowing from the March of Dimes polio strategy, we aren't above using poster children if the timing is right.

First, we need a personal end point or destination, a true north. At least, that's where I started. Without history and accountability and scientific method, Environmentalists will be left Grasping for Straws.  In the big math, the net cost of extraction vs. reuse/repair/recycling, finding novel things to make people to feel guilty about isn't going to get us to our sustainable destination.

Grasping at Straws....