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.

In Europe: On the Trail of the Great Grey Whale

The Great White Whale, from Moby Dick, is a story which combines the medieval tales of obsession (Gawain and the Green Knight, or the Jaborwocky) with the exoticism of travel and foreign adventure.

This isn't one of those literary blogs, but I was in Lyon France yesterday (home of Interpol offices), and next week I'll be driving through Geneva, Basel, and home of the European Union (Strassberg).  I flew in with my family to Denmark (spending 3 nights with old Scandinavian chums), and we drove south, stopping in twice in Germany and Luxembourg, then Lyons, and now find ourselves in Perpignan.

Next week I leave them here and drive back solo, hoping for a series of gams on WasteCrime policy, WEEE rules, with the final stop in London.  It's not just a chance to charge part of the trip to business (though it's legitimately that as well), but also hopefully a chance to meet Joseph Benson, face to face, outside Heathrow.

Most of the Europeans I've spoken to an this trip know as much as the average American about used appliances.  Our Scandinavian friends told about how their package delivery man (an African immigrant) asked them to buy an old freezer one day, which he saw outside the house.   They said it was for the dump and he could have it. and he explained that on his trips back to Africa, he always sends a sea container of repairable WEEE for friends and family to fix.

Euroeans gam on stoneage Europeans - whoa

The friends are both archaeologists or anthropologists at a Norwegian university, and are able to talk about cultural tools and relics from stoneage times (we visited a Stoneage Village outside Vinderup, Denmark, see photo).  We drank, and talked about what would be left of our time for future archeologists and anthropologists to comb through?

Then talked about fake antiques, like the fake-vintage-toys I saw for sale at a French highway rest stop (possibly refurbished, but no way were these "as is" condition, and I suspect they were just "made in China" like every other toy at the rest stop).   The way age and value intersect can make the marketplace, and is easy to study in economics.  But when the trade is layered by race and nationality and geography, it becomes too complex a legal maze, and the burden of proof shifts against the Africans I recklessly presumed to be innocent.

• Fake antiques.
• Actors playing in stone-age villages.
• Used electronics, sold for reuse

Response to The Lancet: Electronic waste—time to take stock

Electronic waste—time to take stock

A member of WR3A based on Sao Paulo, Brazil, emailed me a copy of an article in the respected journal "The Lancet" yesterday.   It reminded me of the Charlie Schmidt article in Environmental Health Perspectives in 2006, when I was interviewed, and unfortunately, kept a hand tied behind my back.   Charlie erred on the side of "white guilt" and wrote an article that supported J. Puckett's of BAN.org now completely discredited allegation that African importers were "mostly" importing TVs to be burned for copper.   Puckett only recently admitted (in the comment section of an article by Bloomberg) that he had done no research while in Africa and made the "80%" statistic up.  He simply made it up.

Profiling kids at dumps

I now realize that once an allegation is printed in a respected journal, like EHSP or The Lancet, especially when accompanied by "poverty photos" of kids at dumps, that the "presumption of guilt" shifts, rather violently, against reuse FIXers techs geeks of color.  The white guilt ricochets around, and in the end, it's the African, like Hamdy of Egypt or Benson of Nigeria, who is accused, arrested, loses his business.

For that reason, my new policy is to never let a "reporter", like Dr. Jack Caravanos, off the hook as easily as Charles Schmidt.  I haven't met him yet, am certain he's a good guy, just like Therese Shyrane and David Higgins of Interpol, and UK enforcement leaders lik Graeme Vickery  (a supporter of Joe Benson's arrest).  All good people, armed with the statistics Basel Action Network hallucinated, who think that most African importers are guilty of #wastecrime.


OPEN LETTER TO THE LANCET AND JACK CARAVANOS

Dear Mr. Caravanos,

Are you the author of the piece in the Lancet?  http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)61465-8/fulltext  First, I want to congratulate you on entering the discussion, and second, to introduce you to three professors who are working on a grant together to explore reform, rather than ban, of the trade.  Dr Lepawsky is from Memorial University, Dr. Goldstein from USC, and Dr. Kahhat teaches engineering at PCU Peru.

"Much e-waste (estimated to total 45·6 million tons in 2012) originates in developed countries. Treaties such as the 1989 Basel Conventionprohibit the export of defunct electronic equipment for disposal in developing countries. However, a loophole that allows the export of electronic equipment for re-use results in most of this retired equipment ending up in developing countries—a problem exacerbated by a lack of resources to test equipment for functionality. E-waste output from developing countries is also rising rapidly, and will soon overtake the developed world as the dominant source."

While there is definitely an element of truth here, and while the aspects of bored children burning things in landfills is completely unacceptable, I'd like to invite you to revisit the article from another point of view.   According to several studies, the import of used electronics cannot really be explained, economically, by any economics of "externalization".  Externalization of recycling costs definitely exists, but would not explain the sorting of loads sold.   From what I've personally observed, cities like Accra and Lagos have had television and electronics for several decades, and the way their own eventual discards are treated bears reform in the same way ours did two decades ago.

Nigeria, in 2007, had 6,900,000 households with television (World Bank).  And according to a 2012 storty, the UNEP, which intercepted and tested 279 sea containers imported by Nigerian techs, found 91% reuse in those containers - actually higher reuse rate than brand new product sold in Africa.  I'll share two quotes from the UNEP studied (funded in part by a grant from the Basel Secretariat).

"The majority of refurbished products stem from imports via the ports of Lagos. The interim results from project component 2, the Nigerian e-Waste Country Assessment, show that 70% of all the imported used equipment is functional and is sold to consumers after testing. 70% of the non-functional share can be repaired within the major markets and is also sold to consumers. 9% of the total imports of used equipment is non-repairable and is directly passed on to collectors and recyclers."

- Final report of the UNEP SBC, E-waste Africa Project,  Lagos & Freiburg, June 2011 

Here's another quote from the Nigeria E-Waste Assessment Study:

"Refurbishing of EEE and the sales of used EEE is an important economic sector (e.g. Alaba market in Lagos). It is a well-organized and  a dynamic  sector that holds the potential for further industrial development. Indirectly, the sector has another important economic role, as it supplies low and middle income households with affordable ICT equipment and other EEE. In the view of the sector’s positive socio-economic performance, all policy measures aiming to improve e-waste management in Nigeria should refrain from undifferentiated banning of  second-hand imports and refurbishing activities and strive for a co-operative approach by including the market and sector associations."

If you simply mean that most of the used goods imported to Africa work or are repaired, but will eventually be discarded in a decade or two, I'd agree with that, since 70% of the sales documented (product in use) are used product.  I don't think that mining more lead, tin, copper etc. to make brand new product, however, would either eliminate the eventual dumping problem.  It would certainly elevate the exposure of Africans to lead and other pollution - hard rock metal mining is the primary source of toxics in both the USA and Africa.

The photo above, taken from a film by Greenpeace, shows a typical load of imports.  Frequently these are used CRTs taken out of hotels, upgraded for flat screens.  The Africans who purchase them are very picky, and you will not see a lot of variety of age or type of e-waste in these loads.

I'd invite you to visit my plant in Vermont, or to come down and meet with you at CUNY.  Our organization, Fair Trade Recycling (fairtraderecycling.org) is dedicated to improving quality of loads sold to repair and refurbishing markets.. The moral of your article seems to be that the "reuse" is some kind of a "loophole", and that people should be somehow ashamed if some of the goods sold or repaired in Accra or Lagos originated in New York.   I'm afraid that "boycott" attitude has not been very effective, driving entrepreneurs into back alleys to find the computers and televisison Africans need but cannot afford to buy new.

Robin Ingenthron

So that's my "open letter" to Jack Caravanos.  I hope I didn't burn any bridges.  I still correspond with Charles Schmidt, who unfortunately cannot get an editor interested in exhuming the bodies for DNA tests.

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Now Blow Your Mind on Q-Analysis

Clean, Big and Obvious:   Six Billion People Aren't Going Away

"Uncle Will" Stephenson

I left the last blog hanging on a follow up (which is coming).  But it's a holiday and vacation coming up, when I traditionally "go academic" in the blog.

Dirty Little Secret : Clean Big Obvious

The weak link is between "Secret" and "Obvious".  The first question you have to ask is "Obvious to Whom?" "Secret to Whom?"   Or does a secret only matter to one billion "big and clean" people?

Whom is being Surveyed?   This is a question I grew up with, as the oldest kid whose dad was getting a Ph.D. in Journalism at Columbia Missouri - then considered the top J-School and still a giant.   I sat as a kid and absorbed dinner conversation between my dad, his Faculty Advisor Will Stephenson, and my great Grandfather, William Freeland.  And I was told to finish my peas, and not spread them about the plate, because children were starving in China...

Fair Trade Recycling Announces Agreement with RE:Solve (Resolv.org)

Mobilizing Information about Fair Trade Recycling Standards in Used Electronics

WR3A.org, dba Fair Trade Recycling, is soliciting donations from members and supporters to fund the transition of our NGO to a venue in Washington DC.  The outcome will be a mature, responsible, diplomatic organization which is better able to defend the best practices in recycling, and to defend them and those who practice them from thinly veiled accusations of exploitation and other "dirty little secrets".

WR3A is changing, but it's not going away.  We are going into a new phase of the organization's development.   The message of Fair Trade Recycling is moving out of Vermont, to Washington, DC.  We are mobilizing the message about fair trade recycling.

Fair Trade Recycling is joining the Solutions Network at Resolve.

Below are three other projects housed at ReSolve's Solutions-Network.

CONFLICT-FREE TIN INITIATIVE

In September of 2012, the Conflict-Free Tin Initiative was announced by Industry partners convened by the Dutch government. The Conflict-Free Tin Initiative project intends to start a conflict-free tin sourcing program in South Kivu, an eastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The initiative pilots new tracking and tracing procedures to ensure the conflict-free status of the supply chain. Following the conflict-free testing phase of the pilot, the initiative will address other mine-site sustainability issues. View project

CONFLICT FREE SMELTERS

The Conflict-Free Smelters (CFS) Program of the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) and Global E-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) seeks to end supply chain support for the sale of illicit minerals from Eastern DRC and the surrounding region.  As smelters/refiners (smelters) build systems and demonstrate compliance with the provisions of the EICC-GeSI Conflict-Free Smelter (CFS) Program, they may encounter transition or start-up costs associated with participation in the program.  It is recognized that these costs may be most significant to small and medium smelting enterprises.  The CFS Early-Adopters Fund is designed to offer smelters an extra incentive for early participation by helping to offset these transitional costs. View project

SOLUTIONS FOR HOPE

In July of 2011, the Solutions for Hope Project was announced by Motorola Solutions Inc., a leading manufacturer of mission critical public safety and enterprise wide communications equipment and AVX Corporation, a leading tantalum capacitor manufacture. The ‘Solutions for Hope Project’ was launched as a pilot initiative to source conflict-free tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Tantalum is a metal used in capacitors for electronic products and is derived from the mineral coltan, which is in rich supply in the DRC. View project