Readers know I'm following the coverage of the UN studies of Africa (Where are WEee in Africa" 2011) with great interest.  Elizabeth at IFIXIT wrote a good piece, which was hommaged at Treehugger.  The USA Voice of America (which, having lived in Africa, is important), covers the story pretty well, as does Science Daily.

You will remember we covered the first releases of the report HERE at Good Point Ethical Recycling blog in April, 2011, and have been squealing like pigs for 10 months, trying to get attention to it.

For those of us working and trying to help these emerging nations, there are babies in the e-waste bathwater.

The value of this informal economy is difficult to gauge, although the formal and informal income of those engaged in the e-waste sector in Ghana is estimated to be between $106 million and $268 million per year. VOANews.com

The goal of our Fair Trade Recycling is to make this better, not worse.  But we have to be realistic about banning the trade, taking the jobs away without studying them, as HR2284 will do.  End of life and lifecycle science is spinning in its grave.

Where the loads were studied most carefully (176 containers analyzed in Lagos), 70% were fully functional, and half of the remainder were repaired... that's 85% reuse.  Moreover, the report says what we've been saying - this is a huge opportunity, if done correctly (e.g. with fair trade):

In contrast to the informal recycling sector, where collection and recycling of E-waste is almost exclusively carried out by individuals largely consisting of migrant laborers who are often stigmatized in African societies as «scavengers», refurbishment is viewed as a relatively attractive economic opportunity for an increasingly well-educated, semi-professional labor force. In Accra (Ghana) and Lagos (Nigeria), the refurbishing sector provides income to more than 30,000 people.

The report is not without all kinds of caveats and cautions.  Clearly the authors are sensitive to the controversy of the imports of "e-waste" they are studying.

Here's a piece of friendly advice.  If you are a white European expert on environment, living in Africa, and someone comes to you for a quote on the UN Study, you might want to read at least the executive summary.  (Original title of this blog "Susanne Dittke of Envirosense Please Read Report You Are Commenting On.")  If you are a reporter, like Cal Milmo of the Independent, you may want to dig a bit next time a Nigerian is convicted of exporting e-waste.

STORY:  Africa turns imported electronics into hundreds of millions of dollars in jobs.


BLACK HISTORY MONTH.... The point has been made.   The anti-export, e-waste watchdog organizations were fueled by an intoxicating certainty that globalization was "externalization", and that world trade is inherently suspect.

They created a fake statistic, out of very thin air, that 80% of the "ewaste" in the USA is exported, and that 80% of the imports into places like Africa were junk.   The math failed on face value, but the images of "scrap boys" banging metals apart carried the day.   Splitting copper from steel in motors was mysteriously labelled "toxic".

Despite my best efforts, in posts like "E-Waste Madness 2010", "We Shouldn't Have to Make That Choice 2009",  and Motherboard in 2011, the "Ewaste police" gathered steam.  I took arguments I'd made in trade print in 2002 (Recycling Today, "Setting a Higher Standard") and used the pulp blogging to document the innocence of the Geeks of Color.  Sometimes I wrote with facts and statistics, sometimes with reason, sometimes with literary allusions aimed at the higher education field, sometimes in other languages.  Sometimes I really stuck my neck out and named influential people who should know better, like Donald Summers, Josh Mailman, Solly Granatstein, and Terri Gross.   Sometimes, I use video and tweets.  But perhaps the most important efforts have been to document the actual trade, and fight the fraudulent statistics with real numbers, examined by grad students and professors in several continents.

E-Scrap News is the first major newspaper to call a duck a duck.   The stats on imports into Africa were fake. Basel Secretariat believed them, and sent researchers, and found ... exactly what I've been describing, in posts like Monkeys Running the Environmental Zoo.   The UN found several hundred scrap boys in dumps.  But they also found, shocker of shockers, 30,000 repair and reuse techs, producing value and internet, the exact same way as Singapore, South Korea, and Benjamin Franklin got started.  Buying surplus media production (display units or printing presses), and making them "good enough" for the "good enough market", creating sustainable jobs with added value.  Had CBS 60 Minutes spent one more day in China, and followed the film I'd given them, they would have seen the same thing.

So now what?  Will the E-Waste Madness now end?

World electronics recycling policy has been boiled down to characterization of trade between "wealthy" OECD nations and "poor" non-OECD nations.

Photos, film, and images describe people living in a geography which is too distant for the viewers to visit.

Below the photos and the break are two videos, two stories of what scrap exported to Hong Kong are all about.   One is the description from BAN.  The other is the biography of an American scrap recycling trader, describing what life is like in Hong Kong.

First, photos of SWANA style landfills in the "new territories".







Videos below

Pulp Non-Fiction.   My career, developing recycling infrastructure.  Markets, participation, and logistics make recycling more economical. People who want to recycle, and mills which can use waste materials as resources, working together.  You know, the alternative to cutting down rain forests.

Who is really poisoning and destroying his brothers?

The success of recycling, in many ways, is no more important than the establishment of an infrastructure for laundromats.   There weren't washing machines all over the country one hundred years ago.  Now there are.  They have created countless spare hours for poor women to use in more productive careers, education, etc.  Like internet cafes in Africa, they bring tech access to the masses.  But what could be more boring?


Part of the challenge for recycling culture is to accept our success and become boring.  We were part of an environmental sustainability movement.  In many ways, we were the most important part, as recycling saves carbon, energy, forests, and species, and creates wealth where there is poverty.

The temptation over the past ten years has been for recycling people like myself to try to find a new controversy, a new battle, a new war.  We are like retired colonels who miss the days of bravery and grandness. The temptation to set off on a new crusade is understandable.

For me, the pursuit of recycling infrastructure has become about erasing national boundaries in order to make the solid waste hierarchy more efficient.   We reduce mining by extending the lives of products already mined, for example.  In doing so, we bring internet cafes to dark places.  Others stay in the USA, and see "overseas" as a new adversary.

I'm an optimist about the future, not an apologist for the present.  Recoiling from poverty is not the same thing as compassion.  We have to get our hands dirty helping Africa, not just keep our consciences in shiny isolation.  

Scientific study, UN participation, interviews with importers and exporters, surveys by ISRI, mapping of transport by geographers, measure of display sale shipments, measure of growth of online access... in the past ten years we've learned a lot about electronic scrap recycling that we didn't know when "exporting harm" (NGO's first video) hit the circuit.

Some in the OECD* want us to think there are still too many unknowns to "risk trade" with surplus electronics overseas.   But with what we know, where do we go to make progress for the 83% of the world in "non-OECD" countries?



What happens to "E-Waste" In Africa?

 -    Most of the junk being burned by kids was in use for years, collected from offices and homes in Accra.

 -    Most of the money and jobs in the African recycling economy come from the added value of repair and refurbishing.  There are 30,000 technicians, only a few hundred "scrap boys".

 -    Most technicians prefer to work on electronics from rich people which they can resell and reuse.

 -    Most of the scrap boys have no other place to go except war, drugs, mining, and crime.

 -    Most end-of-life computers are hand-disassembled, which adds economic and environmental value -  
    stripped to the bone for reuse and parts potential, and every metal is graded and cleaned.

 -    Rich in Africa get new computers, middle class get used computers, the poor inherit the scrap.  The
       problem in the imagery poverty.  Poor won't get richer via economic isolation.


Who has the Supply of Electronic Scrap, surplus and waste in the USA?

 -    Most wealthy generators of technology are risk averse, won't risk to be accused  of dumping.

 -    Most wealthy generators of new technology buy new (upgrade) rather than repair and reuse.

 -    Most wealthy generators of new technology live in states which ban the export of used computers.

 -    Most recyclers of technology don't have time or experience in Africa.

 -    Most of the "worst e-waste" is processed in the USA, clean scrap value is sold on world markets.


What happens to surplus electronics in the USA?

 -    Most businesses who export to Africa don't get big contracts which ban export to Africa.

 -    Most Africans who buy from the USA don't buy from companies with big contracts in USA.

 -    Most containers of electronics, copiers, displays, unloaded in Africa are sourced from smaller e-waste
      businesses without the capacity to shred the bad and buy new.

 -    Most domestic reuse techs prefer first dibs on USA laptops, servers and computers.


What does Fair Trade Recycling do?

 -    Creates a trading window for big USA companies to sell their best stuff to African Techs.

 -    Gives wherewithal and incentives to Africans to adapt best recycling practices.

 -    Provides for 3rd party verification and mediation when best laid plans go wrong (containers tipped,
      demand changes, expectations aren't met).


Who Opposes Fair Trade Recycling?

 -    Companies which have invested millions in shredding and e-Stewards Standards.

 -    Refurbishers who see "tested working" as guarantee against competition from African Techs.

 -    New Manufacturers who see market cannibalization in reuse and refurbishing markets.

 -    Junk sellers who like the idea that "export is good" but don't want 3rd party verification and mediation.

 -    Dictators who want internet to be difficult and expensive, accessible only to the connected.

 -    Software companies with concerns about spread of unlicensed ware in unlicenseable nations.

 -    Legitimate E-Scrap Recyclers with concerns about an under-funded "certification" process.

How Do We Jump-Start Fair Trade Recycling?  (Suggestions wanted)


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* OECD = Obsessive Electronic Consumption and Demand Nations (tips hat to Slashdot submitter)

James Joyce chose his path.

The fair trade recycling ideas, started with WR3A in 2006, have been steadily growing in recognition.

We hit a bump (as everyone did) during the recession in 2009-2010.  Our WR3A model of cooperative marketing continued to be successful at funding end-of-life recycling at the back end of contract manufacturing (takeback) factories, ie using leveraged supply agreements to win improved processes overseas.   But we ran into three problems:

 

From Wikipedia 2012.02.14

NEWS FLASH:  Most used computers and electronics found in Africa were purchased and imported at very great expense.   There is no incentive to pay for and ship junk.  The logic of anti-export organizations - that a few good ones at retail could explain their claim of 80% junk - may work mathematically, but makes no business sense.   Why would Africans buy the goods for $20, and pay $19 per unit just to ship each one, and then burn them for $3 worth of copper?  Today's Science Daily refers to UN Studies providing us with the truth about e-waste:

DAVID WOLMAN - David Wolman is a contributing editor at Wired, a former Fulbright journalism fellow and a winner of the 2011 Oregon Arts Commission individual artists fellowship. His third book is The End of Money.  (The Atlantic, May 4, 2011)


Wolman's new book, The Instigators, follows how Revolution 2.0 came to a head, and how online and Wired activists were able to communicate and sell the democracy on the Arab street.


I have sent a note to Wolman (though these never seem to get anywhere) suggesting that he go back a little further in his timeline.   As I've said many times, the revolution did not happen on Ipads and Android phones.   Vermont had a role in exporting about 30,000 affordable used computers to Egypt between 2002 and 2008.  In 2008, the Egyptian customs seized $80,000 worth of P4s in three sea containers, and our direct trade was broken.


Two years later, Jim Puckett of BAN was applauding the Egyptians classification of any computer manufactured more than 3 years earlier (i.e., costing less than half your annual salary) was illegal "e-waste", working or not.  The CRT display devices, which are good for 20 years, were banned.


But Mubarak could not put the Genie back in the bottle.  (photos below)  The efforts to "profile" geeks of color as polluters, as terrorists, as primitives, went down in the 9th round.