LIVE from UNH's Post Landfill Action Network: Internship, #FreeHurricaneBenson

Presenting to 150 Recycling "Zero Waste" Activists in Durham NH.  

1)  We go LIVE with the iPetition to #FREE Hurricane Joe Benson (see tab at right)
2)  We go LIVE with the Fair Trade Recycling Ambassador Program Applications (Internship).

Much has been written, and will be written, about Joe Benson's ridiculous trial, convicted based on the "common knowledge" that the "majority" of TVs and electronics he purchased would be dumped and burned.

The Fair Trade Recycling Ambassador Program is being launched to recruit students interested in international travel to fly to countries where used electronics are being purchased and interview the buyers.  Find out what's being dumped (if anything) and negotiate improvements (if necessary).

WR3A/FairTradeRecycling would provide relief to the legitimate Geeks Of Color - like Benson's buyers - who are being branded as ignorant children.   A college educated Recycling Ambassador could go to Agbogbloshie and find out where the dumped TVs came from (as Grace from Memorial University did, finding they were collected in carts from the City of Ghana, NOT from sea container yards).  At the same time, if the buyers aren't all they claim to be, that could also be revealed.

Instead of "fly and buy" (or "fly and lie"), think of it as "fly and sell".

Playing Nice With "eWaste" Geeks

I sort of get wound up sometimes.  I really believe in Fair Trade Recycling, and it's really sad that our biggest opponents are "environmentalists".  This post is dedicated as a reminder of some of the people I've been very, very proud to have met in developing nations.  See my friends pictures, below the "more" fold.

Photo Simon Lin, Wistron chairman

Photo credit: Digitimes file photo

What is a shame is that I have no slides of, or friends in, Chengdu, China.  It's just a little bit smaller than Cairo, with 14 million residents.  It's in Western China, which has lagged in development.

How is China trying to develop and advance this part of their country?  By partnering with Wistron, (the contract assembly company that owns ACER, number 2 in world PC sales).   The mainland Chinese government has turned once again to a Taiwanese billionaire with "tinkerer" roots.   Wistron began as a maker of plastic cases for computer monitors, and continues to supply SKD factories.  I'm sure there will be Western pessimism about Wistron and environmental stewardship, as there is with Foxconn and other Taiwanese-owned manufacturers.  But do they know that Wistron is also opening a major plastic recycling plant in Texas?  In fact, Wistron funds my company to collect computers from schools, free of charge, in New England.

I have met several people in the refurbishment business who bragged of knowing Simon Lin (one SKD factory owner was a nephew named after him).  Will I live to see one of my friends below, from Africa, Latin America, or South Asia, use the same refurbishing springboard?  No more far fetched than the idea of China's Shenzhen beehive would have been (to most) two decades ago.  And Taiwanese and Chinese investors are buzzing around Africa and South America like bees on daffodils.

What dreams can we have for the developing world?  I learned a new vocabulary word, ODM (original design manufacturer)...

These are great stories, about sustainable reuse, intelligent refurbishing, and geek and tinkerer economies, and recycling takeback, worldwide.  When I heard Allen Hershkowitz of NRDC, speaking on the Diane Rehm Show, say "I have been there, I have seen it" to describe "#ewaste exports" to 83% of the world, I shook my head.

I think I've been to a lot of different places.  Yet I could never imagine myself saying "I have been there" to describe the rest of the darn world.   I've never been to Chengdu, I've never even been to India or Pakistan.  But here are some places I have been to, and some people who have electronics knowledge have in common, with each other, with Wistron, and with FreeGeeks and Refurbishers here in the USA.

Travel Time in E-Wasteland

OECD Sierra Madres - Hope, Effort, Poverty, Copper

[Introspective Navel Gazing Blog Alert]

I'm stumbling around on my Phoenix-Tucson-Fronteras-Sierra Madres-Bisbee-Tucson-Phoenix-Las Vegas (CES) trip.  Have had some time to get a few articles and insights into draft, but need time to get the right pictures etc.     I think there is some really new insight into the USA's "E-Wasteland" policy to come out of this.

I've got pictures of mining trucks the size of a three-story restaurant, hauling red rocks and mud from the pits of the earth.  I've got pictures of grandmothers' fingers turning tiny screws to release optic sensors from CD roms, which we can sell to laser-pen manufacturers in China.   Tomorrow I'll have pictures of the latest new gadgets from the Stuff-a-Plenty show (CES) in Vegas.  I had 4 days of intensive conversations (as well as silly movie scene recollections) with Ph.ds and grad students, discussing Marxist vs. Smith labor economics.   Along the way I've been meeting with Indie recyclers in the trenches, patching their minivans with duct tape, cruising the streets to take massive wooden projection console Televisions from the spare rooms of retirees, and providing phone support to staff in Middlebury.

Now I have to spend all my remaining time putting together a Powerpoint for the CES Show in Las Vegas.  I'll be with an august panel of experts and don't want to wing it.  But here is a big insight on what people did that made a difference 50,000 years ago.