Showing posts with label watchdog. Show all posts

FIREHOSE BLOG: Africans, Malaysians, Middle Eastern Technicians - Run for cover

The firehose of disinformation about our Fixer brethren continues.

There is a war against the "Good Enough Market". CAER, Greenpeace, and Basel Action Network have refused to withdraw the falsified and disproven statistic that 80% of used electronics exports are primitively burned in a horrible toxic process. Interpol in Europe, acting on the fake, discredited, false, made-up statistic, has arrested 40 African export businesses. USA EPA has publicly accused an Egyptian man of primitive ape-like processes for 100,000 computer monitors for which he paid $28 each ($21 per monitor plus approximately $7 in shipping).

You think the USA had a problem in the deep south in the 1960s? Look at how we are treating the Deep South of the world. Firehose of false, fake, brutally dishonest allegations against technicians in developing world. And it's "environmentalists" holding the firehose.

Emerging markets (3 billion people with per capita income ~$3k/year) online more hours than West

Greenpeace Europe video accuses these men of burning these TVs. Interpol arrested their boss.

Malaysia has now taken away the permit from this factory, written about by Shanghai reporter Adam Minter.

I got out of the Egypt business just before the crackdown by shipping monitors to the Malaysia company, which refurbished them to new-in-box warranty for my old Egyptian partner. Now, the Environmental Malpractice is making them the fourth victim.

Term Paper Required Reading: Waste Policy Haves and Have Nots

Here are three background reading assignments:

A: History of the light bulb (Arizona State University INVSEE)
B: Rapidly Urbanizing Populations Face Unique Challenges (WorldWatch Institute)
C: Network of Tinkerers - 2007 US Bureau of Labor Statistics

Network of Tinkerers - Bureau of Labor Statistics
	[PDF] www.bls.gov/ore/pdf/ec070120.pdf File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View by PB Meyer - 2007 - Cited by 5 - Related articles Nov 5, 2007 – Network of Tinkerers: A Model of Open-Source Technology Innovation. Peter B. Meyer, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Working Paper 413 ...

When you fail to understand that "waste" is relative, and you apply the precautions over past waste in present contexts, you would take the used printing press from Benjamin Franklin, you'd take the used RCA victrolas from from Japan Victrola Corporation.

The movement of used goods from "haves" to "have nots" is a story of opportunity. Sales of working product (USA producing new cars and selling them to Europe) is an exchange from "haves" to "have nots". Donations of rice to children is an exchange. Purchase of coffee from a country that has coffee, for consumption in a country that does not have coffee, is an exchange between haves and have nots.

When you study the history of development, and the history of tinkering, and the history of new products, from light bulbs to flush toilets, you prepare yourself to do a better job trading in commerce. Or you can tell yourself that prohibition, boycotts, and bans on commerce are the answer... if you ignore the history of prohibition, bans, and boycotts.

Why I'm Pro Globalization

First, the anti-Globalists have to admit there's not much we have to say in the matter.

Pretending that the USA and Europe can isolate themselves, and that Asia, Africa, and Latin America's 6 billion people are going to develop better or more slowly without us is an a priori joke. There simply is no solution to "globalization" and kvetching about it is like complaining about getting old. Hippy grandparents yearning for the good old days of starvation and smallpox in poor countries is not my scene. Wealth is increasing (see chart below) in countries which trade most.

No thank you, Daisy Racism

So, if the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, are ideas like alter-globalization and fairtrade going to do better if the rich and well regulated consumers get on the sidelines and boycott the emerging markets? Of course not. The poor benefit more when they have more choice of people to trade with.

Third, having lived in Africa and having opened a recycling factory in Latin America, and having traded millions of dollars of goods with Asia, I can tell you that the Tin-Tin comics image of the emerging world is about as accurate as Uncle Toms Cabin in describing Atlanta. The image of "primitive wire burning" recyclers around the world is intensely over-played, to the point of racial profiling, and belongs with "Arab terrorist" and "American cowboy" and "Japanese kamikaze". All those anecdotes exist, but if that's your primary image of Dubai, Houston or Tokyo, you are ignorant. Ignorant means "stupid with hope for a cure", though I'm sometimes afraid the condition is chronic.

Boycott as a response to "globalization" is like burning libraries to prevent pornography. It's that damn stupid. As a lifelong environmentalist who had devoted my life to recycling, I am ashamed to the point of tears that the "green movement" has harbored racist images of fixers and tinkerers, technicians and geeks. We hurt the American economy when we shred items of value which could have been exported, and we hurt the buyers who then buy used product from Hong Kong or Shanghai with fewer choices. Worse, when we shred up rare earth magnets and turn circuit boards into "fluff" to avoid superior hand disassembly, we help mining.
Mining is what builds the roads that kill the gorillas. Mining "non-toxic" tin from Indonesian coral islands is what kills the sharks. White eco-witch-doctors need to stop prescribing death.

If you are a "green" environmentalist, and you have friends who are global isolationists, tell them to get on a fair trade bandwagon, because boycotts are the new segregation, giving sinister meaning to "the new black".

Give the developing world a choice of jobs besides warrior, miner, poacher, sex worker... let them refurbish and recycle, give them incentives and tools, implement contracts to reduce child labor by paying adult wages. Give boy scout badges for recycling to the poster children, and say "shame on you" to "watchdogs" who exploit poster children for money and don't share a dime with the kids.

I'm a globalist because I have friends in Africa, Latin America, and Asia who I met through trade, and we treat each other as equals, and we have all benefited. My children eat with their children, my wife meets with my partners and their sisters and brothers. None of this would have happened if I had been afraid to cross the tracks and trade with brown people. I see my friends profiled, and I'm called names for expressing my loyalty to them. Very harsh names. I was too young to join the Civil Rights marches in the American south. But I learned enough about those marches, from my home in Arkansas, that I can spot a person using "inference" to make recycling, repair, and trade look like it's causing poverty.

Illustrated: Africa's E-Waste 10 Step Program

This post was submitted this week without photos. I'm leaving the original up for low-bandwidth readers (e.g. Ghana). For high bandwidth, video-streaming, see Motherboard.tv Primary source see
E-WASTE ASSESSMENT - GHANA REPORT of 2011

1. Demand for electronics in Ghana rises. Meltwater Academy (MEST), internet cafes, Accra Hospital, etc. Rate of internet growth is 10 times the USA’s or Europe’s.

2, Wages in Ghana support electricity but not “brand new” electronics. 30% of electronics imported are new, but 70% are used goods from Europe (mostly) or USA [see 2011 SBC E-Waste Assessment Ghana]

3. Ghana Dealer faces $7,000 shipping cost per 350 TVs or 650 computers. He’s paying $15 out of pocket for every bad one that goes on the container, just for transport. So he doesn’t like junk.

4. Ghana Dealer hires techs in Europe to inspect each piece of electronic purchased and loaded. These people have been labelled “Waste Tourists” and “criminals” by race-profiling Europol reports. In the trade, it’s called “fly and buy”.

5. Containerload of “ewaste” arrives in Accra. Customs agents in Ghana a) Don’t know what they are looking at, and b) hear reports by Watchdogs that 80% of “e-waste” imports are bad. A “gift” gets the container through customs (usually computers for inspector), or a “value added tax”. Add $3K to get the container from port to point of distribution.

6. Gently used product is delivered to retail stores and markets in Ghana, many owned by repair technicians who do further upgrades and preventive maintenance. 85% of the goods, according toSBC Report, are working or repaired. Ghana has 15,000 electronics repair technicians.

7. Retail consumers and shoppers in Accra often carry in an old computer for “trade in”. The repair/resale market treats these like used car trade ins, accepting them for discount or less. Some provide parts for other repairs, but most reuse is truly exhausted.

Add caption

8. Scrappers from Agbobbloshie come with cash to buy the accumulated retail consumer trade-in junk from the retail shops. Most of the goods they take to Agbogbloshie were imported back in the 1990s, and used for 15 years… not taken straight from port.

9. USA Non-profit takes photos of poor kids burning 25-year old electronics at Agbogbloshie. NGO says that “80%-90%” of the exports from Europe are burned, creating pollution. Fake statistic is picked up by a reputable paper (e.g. USA Today) and recycled over and over as a "reference".

10. USA Shredding companies and planned obsolescence manufacturers pay non-profit handsomely to promote legislation banning export, or creating non-tariff barriers to export (e.g. San Jose CA), hoping more new sales and more scrap results.

Outcome: If Ghana is forced to buy brand new PCs, in 15 years those will still be brought for trade in, and Agbogbloshie will remain. But for most African consumers, a $700 computer would be impossible, it would force children out of schools and into the fields, and undermine organizations like MEST.

Fair trade recycling is when USA suppliers offer better used product and discounts in return for responsible take-back and recycling of trade-ins and residue. The USA Exporter remains a steward, a partner of the African buyer, providing money and technical assistance to keep recycling safe.

The best and most effective recycling processes are hand labor, a decent job in Africa. Recycling creates clean jobs. And in a decade, Ghana could be like Singapore, a nations which developed buying and repairing and tinkering and making shanzhai white box affordable electronics for wider distribution, or contract manufacturing to assemble and sell new product. Or at MEST Meltwater Academy, they may become coders, write software, and create Apps for Africans.

But there are also alternatives to electronics repair, resale, support, software coding, and de-manufacturing. Kids in Africa can also pick cotton. They can become child soldiers, trap endangered species, mine tantalum and coltan, pump petroleum, become sex workers, or join the military. It’s important that e-Waste Watchdogs stop recycling and repair if these other jobs are to continue.

Environmentalists are good. But we need to know what we are talking about, not just make it up as we go along. Repair and reuse of technology isn’t perfect, but in Africa, recycling and repair jobs are not on the top of the bad list for Peace Corps students to wind up in.

e-Waste Poster Child Telethon from Disney (*Repost from 2011)

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Tomorrow (Monday) is our R2 Audit. So I've invited a guest writer while I prepare the inspection paperwork.

"Hello, My name is Mowgli, and I am the spokesperson for the Poster Child Workers Union [PCWU]. You know me from my work in Hollywood's "Jungle Book". But did you also know I was nearly used as a "poster child" for several charitable campaigns? My creative boss at Disney frowned on that kind of thing. Last I remember, Uncle Walt allowed my image to be used on an Italian Lira postal stamp - back in 1970 (see right).

"However, there are millions of boys and girls like me, in the developing world, who have no Disney lawyers to protect us from unauthorized use of our images. For the most part, we don't mind so long as the photographer is trying to accomplish something good. If my sister is in line receiving food or medicine from CARE, Save The Children, Oxfam, or Unicef, she's hardly in a position to complain, right?

"One group that has been using our images a lot is now being confronted by the PCWU union. It's a 'watchdog' group which was taking our photos doing recycling work. We thought recycling is good. This is better than being a child soldier, a tantalum mine worker, a sex slave, or working in a textile mill. Sure, our lives are tough, but if you were me, wouldn't you rather be recycling than doing something worse? I mean, don't white boy scouts earn merit badges for recycling?

Walt Disney. (2023, July 22). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney

"Now, the official union position is that we can be bought. Ok, that's so blunt... But true. We'll gag and writhe for a peso. But after the photographer leaves, what then? Oy veh! It turns out, no pay for the photo, and worse...! Their campaign wants to shut us down entirely!

Wandering Environmental Justice: Mining Cost of Non-Toxic E-Waste

Hurray for non-toxic metals which replace lead solder under ROHS?

Who cares about gorillas and conflict metal mines, when wealthy nations landfill toxicity is at stake.

Three T's

What is truly sad is that environmentalists my age began recycling before anyone thought it was a "waste" material... we did it to slow energy use and mining. We rode the "avoided disposal cost" wagon right off the cliff. Join the push-back against tin solder, tantalum, and tungsten (and I'd add gold and silver) in electronics. Or at least recycle them, make it closed loop.

Stopping Africans from repairing and recycling computers (with clean tools and incentives under fair trade) means 15,000 Ghana repairworkers lose their jobs. Should they go dig up tantalum so we can make brand new cell phones for them? Is this Basel Brand of Environmental Justice?

I know I've been harsh this month. But this is bloody important, and it's been ten years of the same poster children pushing shredders which don't even recover these rare earth metals. Hand disassembly, saving the chips themselves, is the highest, highest form of recycling. Stop taking pictures of kids at landfills and start taking pictures of good recycling operations, s'ils vous plaites.

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Description:: This is a group for those who want to Tell Cell Phone Companies To Stop using tantalum, tungsten, and tin for cells because using these products they finance armed conflict and atrocities in Congo. Companies need to take two steps to provide credible assurance that they are conflict-free:First, trace their minerals back to their specific mines of origin. This will help them determine if they are p...See More
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Tell Cell Companies To Stop using tantalum, tungsten, and tin for cells

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Tell Cell Phone Companies To Stop using tantalum, tungsten, and tin for cells because using these products they finance armed conflict and atrocities in Congo. Companies need to take two steps to provide credible assurance that they are conflict-free:First, trace their minerals back to their specifi

I hope that this page is able to accomplish the mission. Cell phone companies need to stop using tantalum, tungsten, and tin for cells because using these products they finance armed conflict and atrocities in Congo.