Africa Needs Buses and Trolleys

While the NGOs stay stuck as depicting Africa as a place that couldn't possibly be the source of its own junk TVs and computers - despite World Bank data and history of mass communications investments in the 1970s-90s - I thought I'd take a closer look at what we saw in Agbogbloshie.

Metropolitan bus scrap.  They have been towing junk automobiles to Agbogbloshie for so long, you even find tow truck scrap.

And motorcycle scrap, and scrap tires, and car doors.

Reality of Recycling Vs. Mining: By Satellite

Welcome to Mexico.
Here is the view of our "e-waste" facility in Sonora, Mexico (Retroworks de Mexico).





And here, above, a few dozen kilometers away, is the Copper Mine.







OK... LOoK!  This is a woman, Lidia, working at the Recycling operation.

Recycling isn't perfect.  But compare the press over "recycling" toxics in Africa to the coverage of Africa's actual most toxic sites - the mines that the virgin ore for lead, copper, gold, silver - and the mercury, cadmium, and other chemicals that spew out.

The planned obsolescence and mining industry has developed a terminator-spy, an anti-recycling, anti-reuse organization raising environmentalist donations to fight the only alternatives to mining, refining, and disposing... recycling by hand.