Bullyboy 1: Toxics, Consumption, and Racism

There were 3 seminal works, all published in 1960, which have guided me.

• Silent Spring, Rachael Carlson.
• The Waste Makers, Vance Packard
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Toxics, Consumption, and Racism.   The Story of Stuff, or E-Waste Exports, is “...tria juncta in uno...”



Used electronics recycling policy, as a lens, reveals how liberal occidental policy responds to risks.  The risk of a "toxic", the risk of product obsolescence, and the risk racism.   Particularly of black men taking white women.  Oh, you didn't know white liberals had fears about the third?  How subliminal of me.

These three seminal works have salted the discussion of used electronics regulation.  Racially charged imagery, planned obsolescence money, cognitive risk of "toxics" without borders, are everywhere as we look at the arrests of men like Joe Benson, the seizures of goods purchased by Hamdy Moussa, and the closure of refurbishing factories like PT Imtech in Indonesia.  American society, as much as it has progressed, still betrays a willingness to believe in crimes based on the brown-ness of the accused.

Lagos Nigeria has 6,900,000 households with television.   But when someone photographs a solitary junk TV at a Nigerian dump, we assume it was dumped there from Europe.   So sure, that even when it turns out the trade in used electronics is owned, operated, and successfully steered by African owners, the goods triaged by African technicians and repairmen, in a marketplace echoing the success of Singapore's R&O (repair and overhaul), Japan's Network of Tinkerers, Taiwan and Korean reverse-engineering and good enough markets, NGOs are satisfied to see African businesses enchained rather than question the Story of Stuff assumptions.

Answer:  Not much, you?

The sparse number of scrapped goods in the photos at African dumps (see below fold, under the tire) were probably, statistically, generated in the streets of Lagos, one of the largest cities in the world.   But the story, parrotted by all the western press, is that it came out of a sea container, diverted from a recycling program in the USA or Europe.  We are so sure, in fact, that the US Congress now has a bill (H.R. 2791) introduced to make sale of repairable used electronics to Africans a crime.  Why look at photographic evidence when Annie Leonard has drawn it so simply?  African kids get junk because fat western businessmen don't want to pay to recycle it.

Washington, DC, Jul 24 - U.S. Reps. Mike Thompson (CA-05) and Gene Green (TX-29) today introduced H.R. 2791, the Responsible Electronics Recycling Act (RERA) of 2013. The legislation promotes the U.S. recycling industry by prohibiting the exportation of some electronics whose improper disposal may create environmental, health, or national security risks. 

"We'll start by burning the TVs from London hotel upgrades"

So, to truly connect the dots, Africans like Joe Benson and Hamdy Moussa are motivated not by consumer demand in cities like Cairo and Lagos and Accra, but by an altruistic need cut whitie's recycling bill.  But they don't want to do him such a big favor that they'll take ALL the junk, or any of the most expensive.  They cherry pick out the newest looking TVs and computers, to burn them, despite the fact the new ones have much less copper and gold than the old ones we never see in the African containers filmed by BAN and Greenpeace.

This was the circumstantial case presented in the arrests of Africans during the past year.  A few days ago, I got a chance to do a one-on-one, exclusive interview, with Joseph Benson, the man profiled in Jim Puckett's powerpoint presentation, in London.

Leading up to the meeting with Benson, I did a whirlwind tour of Europe by car, meeting at Interpol offices in Lyon (FR), with Basel Convention staff in Geneva and Fribourg (CH), and flew out of Copenhagen.  I met with four Africans accused publicly by Basel Action Network, Greenpeace, Rupert Murdoch's SkyNet News, and the UK Independent reporter Cahal Milmo, of buying used TVs, sold in Lagos for $100 apiece, to be burned by children for $2 in copper scrap.

Robert Ewell, call Sheriff Heck Tate.  There's a Tom Robinson running loose.

Europe Virus, European blog update

I think I picked up a virus in Sweden.

Not that.  NO.  I mean I used a wifi server to open my blog page, somewhere by cell phone, and now it's getting tons of incoming hits from an icky website and I have to go through it and see if I got something contagious.  If I open the site at retroworks.blogspot.se (Sweden) it opens ok, but .com opens something different.  Don't go to the website tao of bad donkey, it may have infected the Radisson hotel website (run by ESM).

Europe has not been easy for wifi.  Most of the free wifi sites require you to enter a EU cell phone number and then a text is SMS'd to you to enter and validate.  I've got no EU phone, had planned to make all my calls on internet while here.

I've got another Europe travel blog started but have to make it to the plane.  I see a huge drop off in all visits to the blog in the past few hours except for my own and the SPAM icky site, so I hope I don't have to start over.  I'm in Sweden by the way.

I can't say anything really meaty yet about this week's meetings with Interpol staff in Lyon or meeting former Basel Convention sec staff in Geneva and Fribourg, or today's meeting with Hurricane Joe Benson at Heathrow (my first such honor).  There is a lot of meat on the stove.  This was a big, big trip.

From the desk deck of the Scandilines ferry, facing west, it occured to me that a road trip in Europe, not by train or Ryanair or Virgin express or Easyjet, has been unique.   I've driven from New England to Arkansas many times, and from Arkansas to Mexico, but this is my first multi-day (5 driving) trip through 6 countries in Europe.

Our Dane friends, the French family, the Swiss, the Dutch, etc. who I've spoken to it's funny how everyone things my road trip, by car, from Copenhagen to Perpignan and back, seemed a very American way to travel.  FrWhat I can say is that it's the least American road trip ever in Europe.  I meet no Americans, no one but Europeans, in the gas stations, on the roads, in the restaurants.  I stop in tons and cities whiech either cont have trains or no gare close to the highway

OK, have to go rescue the car from European parking ticket spiders.  At 9 AM they crawl out of alleys and behind bushes and simultaneously parking ticket 100% of street parked cars.  Kidding, actually I haven't gotten a parking ticket.  I don't think I got a speeding ticket on the autabahn, either, but my wife says they have speed cameras (like in Arizona two years ago) and snap you and mail you the ticket.  If that's true, I may break the European banking system.

Europe: Comfortable With OECD and Nation Lines on Maps

Late, late cocktails on the fjords of western Denmark can generate some great conversations.   I said to my hosts last week, "You know, in 100 years, I don't think 'nations' and 'nationality' will mean much to people.  Nations will probably be obsolete."

shooting lines were different

We had been talking about World War II, and I was headed for "Catalan France".   It seemed at the time to be harmless enough discussion, and I've said it many times before.  I think my grandchildren will have more "loyalty" to their dot-com address than they will to their "passport".   But in Europe, where I normally expect high falluting philosophical speculation to achieve flight, the idea of non-nationality fell with ze thud.

The lips of our Dane and Norwegian friends drew downward.   They explained the frown:  the idea of "the end of nations" meant "end of democracy".
That idea never occurred to me, an American who votes in state and national elections.  Losing a label does not mean surrendering a freedom.

Well before the end of nations and nationalities, I said that there would be universal democracy, as we are seeing now in the green revolution.  Democracy tends to support peace, not war, and nationalism is most strengthened by threat of war.  The way it would happen would be that cities would vote for mayors, and it would increasingly become meaningless whether a neighboring city - like Barcelona to Perpignan, or Boston to Montreal, or Kansas City MO - Kansas City KS, was inside some other hand drawn line or not.

If City A is a democracy, and City B is a democracy, and both cities have vibrant free trade economies, how are future children to keep up with the lines?

City A is EU, City B is non-EU?
City A is OECD, City B is non-OECD?
City A speaks X, City B speaks Y?
City A is Sunni, City B is Shia?
City A is Catholic, City B is Protestant?
City A ratified the Omega Treaty, City B signed but did not ratify the Omega Treaty?
City A is in WTO, City B is not in WTO?
City A uses Linux, City B uses Microsoft?
City A watches analog TV on PAL, City B watches analog TV on NTSC?

If I was better at math at 9 AM, I could tell you how many different-different, same/different permutations there are of the 9 silly "alpha-beta" tests above. Same-Same-Different-Same-Different-Same-Different-Different-Same squared?


The past century has largely celebrated erasing of lines.   Women vote.  Our children are taught to ignore race.  In northern Europe, that's both easy (they are very liberal) and difficult (they don't have many dark skinned people to practice not noticing). But they are very comfortable crossing language barriers.  My friends are a Norwegian and Dane, raising 3 kids in Bergen, but vacationing chez granny in Jutland.


They scribble through conversations in Danish, Norwegian, and English with easy, not really conscious of which language they are thinking in.   That's really difficult for most Americans to imagine.  We spoke Franglais to keep up.

Geographical Labels on Social Movements

This occurred to me when I was discussing "Americanization" that's occurred in Europe since I first visited here in 1979.  I'm travelling Europe by car rather than train or RyanAir/EasyJet for the first time, and using the freedom to retrace my steps.  Luxembourg was my first EU stop (from Iceland Air), where I slept on a park bench.  Then I tried sleeping in the Bern Switzerland train station, was kicked out, and brought home by a 300 lb red headed swiss deutsch taxi driver who showed me snapshots of nude teen boys all evenining....  ok that's a digression best described over a tall beer.

Anyway, in discussing the fact I'm travelling by car for the first time, I decided it's silly to apologize for that.  The highways are jammed with Europeans in cars, stopping at rest stops, lining up at McDonalds and fueling up.   The experience driving in Europe, other than the speeds on the Autobahns and freeways, is pretty familiar.  The speed is familiar compared to my drive across West Texas.

Anyway, in discussing the "typical American" (my friend Gitte in Denmark was asked by her kids, 17 and 22, whether my family fits that label), or the a-typical drive across Europe, I'm suddenly struck by this insight.  Humans give geographical labels to social movements.

It makes perfect sense.   Over centuries, plagues and fashions and traded inventions arrived from another "place" and changes occured slowly enough for mankind to talk about "occidental" and "oriental" for solid goods, like silk or wool.   The sheep giving the wool from Scotland has as little to do with the silkworm in China as a Big Mac has to do with cheese fondue.   But the geography is completely relative and arbitrary, and as energy access allows us to shorten distances in time, the geographical label is just quaint.

In Vermont, the "true Vermonters" complain about non-Vermont-ness (you have to have your parents to have come from Vermont, more difficult to arrange than a green card - I'm an Ozark Mountain "flatlander").  Williston Vermont, where the big-box stores are found (Staples, WalMart, Dicks Sporting Goods, Best Buy) is referred to as "New Jersey" by the Cool.

In literature, it's called "The Other".  Camus' "L'etranger" is one of the easiest to read French books for an American of my literary/language skill.   I'm sitting at a coffee table across from a francophone literature specialist Ph.D (my wife)

Why Recycling Coordinator Title Trumps Sustainability Coordinator

College and university recycling staff (CURC etc) kept in touch durint the Fair Trade Recycling Summit (Earth Week in Middlebury).  Some have confided that recycling is old hat, "sustainability" is in, and that energy and carbon are at their peak for "prestige" positions at their institutions.

Have always said our goal is for recycling to be taken for granted, to be as boring as laundromats.   But at the same time, if you are truly motivated by green, and ever have a chance at a career in recycling, grab it.

Here's why recycling is the best thing.

First things first, forget all about "waste management" and "zero waste".   We hitched the recycling wagon to the "waste management" pony for one reason.  No, it was not to preserve landfills, or avoid construction of incinerators.   Scrap and recycling has only one competitor - virgin material.

In order to compete with the mining and forest subsidies (e.g. the General Mining Act of 1872, passed during the Apache Indian Wars under the Ulysses S. Grant administration), scrap needed to compete with raw materials by claiming avoided disposal costs.

Recycling, reuse, repair.  They are ultimate environmental impact measures.  Don't quit your recycling job.