Monkey Zoo Math: Reprint of Basel Action Network Fingerprints

In July of 2010, I wrote the post with the most reads to date.  Some have suggested that it was too long and buried the lead, but the people I met after writing it encouraged me to write more, and not to be afraid to write longer.

Below (more:) is the bottom third of the blog "Monkeys Running the Environmental Zoo".  The math has now been corroborated by USITC, by MIT, by World Bank, by the ASU Williams/Kahhat study, the Nigeria and Ghana E-Waste Assessment (studies of 279 actual containers, seized at ports in Lagos, based on reporter Cahal Milmo's and Greenpeace's "investigation" of naughty, naughty African television repairmen).

I will re-link all of those studies this week.   But as a reminder, Basel Action Network knew this in 2006, when they provided guidance to Kenyan researchers Kiaka and Kamande.

PRELIMINARY STUDY ON THE IMPORTED SECOND HAND COMPUTERS IN KENYA - THE CASE OF NAIROBI by Richard Kiaka and Rachel Kamande (2007) "with guidance from Puckett James, Basel Action Network"

The 2010 math has been completely borne out.  All you had to do was listen to the African, Latin American, and Taiwanese refurbishers, and take a pen and the back of an envelope.  It has always been obvious. Toxics are a problem, pollution is serious business... but Racial profiling doesn't look good dressed in green.   There are real victims of Environmental Malpractice, and the time has come to clean our "stewardship" programs of the vestiges of accidental racism and poverty porn.

Whose fingerprints are on the "e-waste" monitors at Agbogbloshie?   African cities.  The "80% export" figure was not just a mistake... it was mathematically impossible, and disproven by BAN's own 2007 study.  

From 2010 Blog:

Q:  How do bad monitors get overseas? 

Monkeys Running the Environmental Zoo Redux Nigeria

In July 2010, I was here in the same beach house (Barcares, France), reading author Bill Bryson's "Short History of Nearly Everything", and I attempted to explain exports of used electronics to Africa the way Bill Bryson might explain it.

It has been the highest ranked, highest read blog.

Many such blogs relied on photos or topical references, and the "Monkeys" blog is not really any exception. The photo of the baby monkey was forwarded back to me by Jeff Hunts of California Recycles (the example makes short shrift of CASB20).

But for me it is the financial analysis in the example at the end of the blog which makes it high ranking.  It uses sample loading of sample purchase orders to predict - 85% reuse.

This was a year after the Ramzy Kahhat and Eric Williams paper (Peru 87% reuse).

It was a year before the UNEP found 91% reuse of electronics imported to Nigeria.

It was three years after BAN's own researcher in Kenya estimated 90% reuse.

And it shows NORMAL TRADE.  Californians return brand new product at 11.9%.  Worldwide, new product failure for circuit boards is 8-33% (ESD).  If we were reporting on a trade which didn't have photos of Pieter Hugo nymphs burning smoky junk attached to it, it would be boring, too boring even for this blog.

Oh, right.  People are going to jail.  Over this.

A week from today, if all goes well, I will be meeting (outside of Heathrow Airport) the man Joseph Benson who was labelled a "kingpin" in the "illegal" trade of used electronics to a country - Nigeria.  Nigeria had 6.9M households with television, a 70% of all sales as "secondary market", and a sampling showing 91% reuse of used electronics imports.

I'm told Benson doesn't like meeting face to face with white male environmentalists.

Who can blame him?

Read the 2010 blog if you haven't yet.  I want to keep it as the #1 read blog.