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And here is the UN funded 2012 study of the imports to Ghana which found 91% reuse. http://www.basel.int/Portals/4... [basel.int] This was the study that caused BAN.org (the NGO) to backtrack on their claims.

They didn't want the reuse numbers to get out because their campaign was really about one important American family value: black people shouldn't be allowed near computers. They'll dirty the Internet up.

Any sources for the stats in Wired or Daily Mail? No? Because the original source has vanished.

Here is a link to research of peer reviewed articles which traces the claims made in Wired (actually repeating what a photographer said, Wired did not make the claim) and Mail scalar.usc.edu/works/reassembling-rubbish/mapping-e-waste-as-a-controversy-from-statements-to-debates-1?path=e-waste-mapping-a-controversy

And here is the UN funded 2012 study of the imports to Ghana which found 91% reuse. http://www.basel.int/Portals/4... This was the study that caused BAN.org (the NGO) to backtrack on their claims.

As for who I am, former Peace Corps volunteer, degree in intl relations, former head of recycling for Massachusetts DEP, consultant to EPA, and founder of WR3A.org which has part of a 3 university $469K research grant on used electronics imports, managed by Memorial University (USC Long Beach and Pontifica UCP Peru also part of the research).

The press release also refers to reporters who attended, including Author of NYT Bestseller (Junkyard Planet) Adam Minter of Bloomberg. I was most impressed however with the Dagbani geeks and nerds who gave us the tour of the site and the import containers with the reused equipment. But finding a news journal like Wired or Mail which actually interviews actual African businesspeople, I'm afraid I can't find quickly. But here is an essay from one of the Technicians who came with us (not Dagbani speaker, he's from Volta region) http://www.isri.org/news-publi...

You can also try doing math on an envelope to see which source to follow. The cost of shipping 700 televisions (what can fit in a sea container) is $10k (purchase of TVs, shippping and customs) or $14 per TV. They contain about $2 in copper. Oh, and Joe Benson, the guy in UK jail? His cost of disposing the bad ones, the ones he was supposedly avoiding recycling costs for? $0, he showed regular trips to recycle the ones he didn't want to pay $14 to ship.

Here is another source, Heather Agyepong (of UK but parents were from Ghana), who visited last summer and reported the same thing, that the "dystopia" and "dumping" was basically not to be found. http://www.okayafrica.com/phot...

Africa has more cell phones than toilets. http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/more-cell-phones-than-toilets The entire infrastructure was built on "e-waste", used cell phones were imported and hacked/jailbroken, which created enough subscribers for private sector companies to erect the towers. The free market bypassed the entire government-infrastructure track. Of course, there is evidence of a second crime here.... http://archive.basel.int/industry/mppi/gdfd30Jun2010.pdf Cell phones are labelled "e-waste" in Europe http://retroworks.blogspot.com/2011/09/new-world-order-interpol-calls.html and Africans who buy them have been declared "criminals" by Interpol.

Solution: Congress needs to pull its collective thumb from its arse and ratify the Basel Convention.

I'm stealing a page from Bill McDonough's wonderful book Cradle To Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. Rather than selling us mere devices, manufacturers should be selling us services following the car leasing model: computer services, television viewing services, &c. That way, at the end of an item's amortised useful life (3-5 years), the consumer trades it back in for an updated model. Therefore, the manufacturer has an economic incentive to make recycling as easy as possible. Some people may say, 'But I want to own my widget!' My response: do you really want to own a depreciating asset? For rapidly-changing classes of asset, ownership makes little sense.

On a related note, Congress needs to ratify the Basel Convention like, erm, yesterday.

Right, which is why it's so important to stick with shops that keep with the Basel conventions. Whenever these sorts of stories pop up, it's mainly due to a lack of adherence to the standards or due to the items being shipped to a place that wasn't involved in the first place.

http://www.basel.int/ has more information.

I have a considerable amount of broken computer and electronic equipment, but leaving it on the curb for someone to pickup and discard in a landfill runs counter to my goal of eliminating the waste. But Office Depot's legitimate recycling program could ultimately end up polluting some river in China or India with lead, cadmium, etc.

Note that the US is not one of the signatories to the 1989 Basel Convention which establishes guidelines on the export of hazardous waste. Therefore, the US can export hazardous electronic waste to other countries for recycling. While countries which sign the Basel Convention (including China and India) are not permitted to accept hazardous waste from non-signatories, it's a profitable business. Brokers from South and East Asia will happily "recycle" shipfuls of dead monitors at rates cheaper than the estimated $25 per unit.

The problem is that the recycling procedures in China and India pollute more than merely dumping the material in a landfill. This article notes the common procedure of burning piles of wires to collect the metal--releasing dioxins and covering the city in toxic ash.

So forgive me for wondering if "free" means that the cadmium from my cordless telephone or the lead from my dead 27" TV is going to end up eventually in the South China Sea and my tuna fish sandwich.

I'm not sure of the letter of this Convention, but does it also stipulate that hazardous waste cannot be shipped *to* a country? Agreements such as this really confuse me; if a country (say India, Pakistan, or China) does not want the waste, they can pass their own laws preventing import. To some nations, the economic benefit may outweigh the environmental cost. If the EU doesn't like that policy, they are free not to trade with the US or other non-signatories. The EU is certainly big enough to exert its economic or political pressure on the US if it so chooses.