Basel Action Network Awarded Title, Cash, Prizes

[Seattle, WA: April 1, 2012]  A hero's welcome was unveiled for an environmental watchdog group, to recap 10 years of efforts to reduce toxics, enforce international law, and close loopholes for dumping of used surplus electronics, or "e-waste".   The award recognized efforts of a USA NGO to represent unsuspecting victims in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Basel Action Network, of Seattle Washington, dedicated its award to struggling Africans in emerging markets.  These small African businesspeople, who spend hundreds of millions of African dollars on used computers, find out many years later that the goods they imported and use are actually "e-waste".

The "Environmental Revolutionary Steward" award was presented by Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Basel Action Network's leader James Puckett arrived by helicopter from his private first class Paul Gaughin Cruise Ship onto a red carpet at a military ceremony at CenturyLink Field.

Puckett approached the podium to a standing ovation by military rulers from a dozen nations.  He accepted the award as well as a check for 1% of the proceeds of customs fees seized for every container of used computers stopped at the ports in Tripoli, Alexandria, and other "developing world" ports.

Only Outlaws Will Export Computers

President Ahmadinejad held the E-Waste trophy high over his shoulders.  He called the BAN organization the "Real heroes" of the "Pledge of True Green Revolution", and the "Stewards of Stability".   This is the first time Ahmadinejad has used the term "green revolution", a term previously banned from use in Tehran.

Each of the generals and dignitaries joined Puckett to decry the pollution and toxic risks from the use of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Google+, Orkut, Stumbledupon, etc.

"Ok, Revolution 2.0 is over.  Revolution 3.0 has now returned things 180 degrees, prior to all of this Kaleed Said nonesense," said Saadi Gaddafi Qaddafy Kwadafee, the billionaire football star and playboy son of deposed Colonel Omar Quadafi of Libya.

Prepared for used cell phone fixer lab raids

"We will not have our children exposed to computer viruses, or poisoned by toxic fumes from affordable computers," said Bashar al-Assad, leader of Syria.  "Used PCs pollute our young brains with pornographic images of democracy."

The "E-Steward Award" recognizes the efforts of European, American, South Korean, or Japanese recyclers who shred the highest percentage of used electronics, or close the doors of affordable "white box" refurbishing factories.

"Good enough technology is not good enough for Africa," said Husni Mubarek, via a Skype call covered on the stadium megastream.  A chant of "Good enough is not good enough" ensued from the green-uniformed military battalion at center stage.


"Appropriate technology is completely inappropriate," said deposed Tunisian president-for-second-life Zine al-Abadine Ben Ali.

RIP: Choma, Lima TV Repairman 1946-2011

Choma, Peru Tech, 1946-2011

As we wind up our re-tour, revisit, and update of the Peru reuse market, we need to share some sad news.  Choma was a TV repairman and longtime employee of ACETV, a women-owned Peru electronics importer (one of our hosts).   

The import business had slowed.  Jinex's brother's monitor resale shop has been converted to a restaurant, and her repair business, while still plugging away, is smaller (one of her 6 employees now does repair).  Choma, one of her older techs, passed away at age 65 about a year ago.

Neither side of the e-waste/e-scrap/e-reuse debate is immune from overstating our case, or of using people as pawns in our war of imagery.  I've used Choma's photo a lot during the past 5 years.  I hope not to become a "parasite of the poor" myself.  This blog shouldn't try to exaggerate the technicians in the emerging world as being some kind of a lavish success story.  The shops are dirty, the work is hard, the workers are poor.  Choma died of stomach cancer, we can't know what difference more money would have made.

Trade, as opposed to the "business" of stopping trade, is by definition something we want to go on and on.  We want to continue to meet the people we do business with, again and again and again.  Success for a fair trade recycler is coming back and making another trade.  Success is when the exchange goes well, both sides make a little more money and get something they would not otherwise have gotten.  But no business is immortal, and as cheaper new (and refurb, and gray market) products arrive in Peru from China, careers like Choma's may pass away, as the TV repair business has in the USA.

When you take pictures of technicians in shops overseas, you are hoping to see them again.   When they pass, like Choma, you have a chance to remember them and be sad for their families, but happy to have worked together, even if you never spoke the same language.  I think there's a distinction between the photos of relationships, and the drive-by photos meant to impart shame, which raise money without ever sharing the names, much less the dimes.   But recycling tourism is also borderline exploitation, and with humility I can say only that I know who Choma was, and I know whom he worked for.  I cannot say he knows me or that I was his friend.   I'm glad for him to have had a sustainable career, and I hope his family knows the respect which some of us feel for the Geeks of Color.

I do have film of the younger (and one older) generation of TV and monitor repair geeks here in South America.  There is still another decade of tinkering to do.  The Tinkerer is Gone, Long Live the Tinkerers.

The theme of this recycling-oriented graffiti-mural, photographed yesterday, seems to be, to take our causes seriously without taking ourselves too seriously.

EWaste Whiplash II: PriestaTollah, Reporters, Sex

"Why your daughter should not marry outside the village"

How E-Waste Trade is basically about Sex and the Church

Whiplash begins when you care, listen, "like", and "follow" people in a competition for your attention.

You are a farmer with 3 daughters.  One is educated, learned well in school.  A second is illiterate, she speaks only her native language, and she works in the fields.  A third daughter is only 10 years old.

A wealthy man comes from the capital city.  He is dressed in a fine suit, he has expensive gadgets, he is obviously very rich.  He asks about taking one of your daughters hands in marriage.

You want to check the guy out.  You go to the Priestatollah.

The Priestatollah emphatically says that he knows about the men from the City.

The Priestatollah came himself from the City... he knows what goes on there.

The Priestatollah will save the one thing most important to you... your family.

. . .



According to the Priestatollah:

• The marriage will be exploitative.
• The marriage is illegal and she will be arrested.
• Your daughters will be abused and treated like slaves
• The City men will take the daughter too young for marriage.
• The City men will poison your daughter's blood with toxics.

EWaste Whiplash I: Recycling Trade Between Rich and Poor

clap, clap, clap.

WHIPLASH and E-Waste Trade:  Good and Evil do battle in international markets, non-profit NGO rescues virgin natives from sinister computer exporter / exploiter...

Smile and wave, clap and nod... that's the instructions for ewaste recycling companies when we read the headlines of E-Stewards and EPA crackdowns.   We aren't asked to share data on what the markets, like here in Lima, are actually like.   That would be like discussing sex, religion, profits, and politics all in one dinner conversation.  Everything mom told you not to talk about at parties.

From time to time a regulator or researcher confides to me, that they read the blog, that they personally are curious about fair trade recycling, and the Geeks of Color.  But they don't want to be seen talking to me, or Dieu forbid, leaving public comments.  I get enough personal private feedback to keep writing.  But no one wants to turn over the money-changer tables with me.  Reminds me of private discussions about Christianity in Arkansas when I was growing up... fascinating and intellectual, but not too loud, keep this between us.

But so much of the news coverage is stupid.  Dudley-Do-Right-Stupid.

Coverage has been 81.3% black and white, victim and protector, Reefer Madness BS.  There is more-than-a-lot of grey area between "consenting adults", and the word "exploitation" is used to describe the concerns third parties have over the consummation.  We are indeed exporting garbage, but it's in the form of negative propaganda about the repair and recycling trade.  Pictures of children in poor countries!!!  BAN.org and SVTC.org and ETB have become like some kind of Save The Children campaign which eliminates the hassle of sending a dime to the kids in the photos.  They are surrounded by good people, but it has become a charity based on NOT doing something (buying and selling used electronics).  The more money you give them, the more they tell people what not to do?

Just remove parts prior to export

Parasites of the Poor.  And when I say that, I'm considered too far right, too radical, politically incorrect, and crazy ol' uncle Rob.  People suggest I say it differently, i.e. in a manner which doesn't threaten the fundraising.   "We wouldn't be talking about e-waste if it wasn't for these NGOs".

Maybe not.  Maybe we'd have been talking about mining rainforests and coral reefs with conflict mining child warriors sending tantalum and coltan money to Kony.  Maybe we'd see that the biggest lead poisoning cases in Nigeria have nothing to do with recycling, but come from rare metal mining.  Maybe we'd be talking about MEST and the actual choices people recycling scrap metal have in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.  Maybe we would actually NOTICE when BAN uses a photo from the outside of this cell phone repair shop to make its case that Geeks of Color are poisoning children, rather than the truth, which is that they refurbish cell phones for farmers in Africa, and reuse chips from phones - reuse even component level parts which took coltan from child warriors to make in the first place.

Why do I get so frustrated at the non-profits?  Why don't I be more diplomatic?  Well, maybe because here I am, once again in the emerging markets (South America), and geek businesspeople are giving up, buying cheap Chinese virgin made products.  The choices given them were to buy from the Americans who are willing to sell "e-waste" to them, which unfortunately includes no one with a conscience.

The people with a conscience are all drinking E-Steward Kool-Aid and boycotting the Techs and Geeks like they are some kind of cyber-leper.  They face shakedowns at customs, as duty officers threaten to seize the whole investment as "e-waste pollution".  They risk too much when they buy affordable used products.  They are told to buy tested working, fully functional equipment from shredding companies which produce "no intact unit" California-fluff.



They are giving up.  And when they give up, they open restaurants.  They need jobs.  Used computers and TV repair was a good job, but that got too political for them.

Here is my family having dinner in a shop which 4 years ago sold used computers and TVs from Middlebury.  These people are still my friends, but they are giving up and trying something else.  Used USA equipment used to be 100% of their family income.  They now buy "brand new cheap-o" Chinese electronics (which is getting better and better), and run restaurants.  Across the street, a former competitor's shop is still selling used TVs and PCs, but my friends threw in the towel.  This will be how Peruvians meet Americans now, as tourists not as traders.

PACE Yourself: Basel Logic of e-Waste Export

HP Blackbird 002 Crashes in the Dead of the Night.
An e-waste export crime in the making...

Basel Convention has a section on legal export which says that repairing electronics is not "Waste".  The ENGO Basel Action Network protested that from the beginning, but lost.  The ENGO now seeks to change this via a BAN "Amendment", calling the Convention as ratified as "an unfinished success story"...

In the meantime, while waiting for its amendment to be passed, BAN is fervently presenting the case that export for repair is indeed already waste.   While waiting to get its export-crime law passed, BAN is also trying to get "competent authorities" in importing countries to act as if repair is already illegal.

Blackbird crashing inthe dead of the night

The NGO has already been very successful when either A) the importing country manufactures new products and sees protectionism value in BAN's interpretation, or B) is a dictatorship trying to stop affordable internet.  89.7% of e-waste enforcement I've seen may be within one of these two categories [tic].  Now they are trying to get the interpretation enacted by USA Congress.   This is what HR 2284, the Green Thompson #Ewaste Bill, would do in the USA.

While waiting for export for repair to be made illegal, how is export for repair already in fact illegal?  BAN explains the logic, in their own words. From the BAN Library: