The Effects of Exporting Used PCs To Africa

retroworks writes "According to this UK MailOnline story, computers donated to Africa are causing quite a few problems. The BBC does a similar story on the junk computers from rich countries found on the ground in Africa. But all of the footage is of the junk PCs; there is no film of any repaired or good computers. There have been a dozen stories now about the bad apples. It seems like there have to be good ones, too, to cover the costs of shipping. Some of the ones in the Mail story actually look decent. Is there more balanced coverage of used computer exports, many of which provide affordable technology to poor people? Organizations like Greenpeace and Basel Action Network are promoting electronics recyclers with zero-export policies. One organization, the World Reuse Repair and Recycling Association, is promoting a 'Fair Trade Coffee' approach to moderate the number of bad computers exported, and has a video showing both sides of the story. A ban on exports leaves Africa with a choice of spending a year's income on a new PC, buying mixed loads of computers from undercapitalized recyclers, or remaining without this level of technology. And our choice seems to be to donate a decent computer mixed with other people's junk, or to grind it up in a perverse tribute to Vance Packard, as 'obsolescence in hindsight.'"

Comments

Good ones don't count

[unixcrab]

The problem is, all the good charity work doesn't cancel out the toxic fallout from the scrapped hardware. Besides, the junk the richer countries send there is hardly a charitable donation, it's a dumping ground.

Re:Good ones don't count

[jadin]

Dude, your mom's going to be pissed when she finds out you slashdotted her driveway.

News?

[Opportunist]

We used "development aid" for ages to get rid of our surplus and other crap we'd have had to dispose of for a lot of money, now we do the same with electronics. Where's this news?

I remember someone doing humanitary work there, giving a speech and essentially saying "Please help us. By not helping us". When we dump free food on a third world country, we ruin their farmers because they can't compete with free food. When we dump free clothing on them, we ruin the few textile mills they have. Essentially, what we do with development aid is to push them more and more into dependency because we ruin whatever industry for the local market might start to grow. Instead we force them to build industries for export, so they can somehow pay back the "development help" we "grant" them.

Want to help? Then don't. Don't send your crap down there. Start trading with them. But not with some international corporation that squeezes the country and the people dry. Trade with companies from there.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, someone who actually gets it. Every other species on the planet naturally lives and dies by such logic. Human beings though (especially those who live in first-world countries) seem to think that large numbers of people living within small radii is somehow normal. If there isn't enough natural-born prey to hunt (ie: without resorting to breeding) and/or fauna to pick, then a larger population is _not supposed to exist_! Only mankind could think there's a way to cheat the inevitable.

The fact is that humanity isn't dying off fast enough. In fact, our planetary population continues to increase. Someday the phony sustainability we've been living under is going to crash, and billions are going to die (as they should).

Think about it. If we were talking about an overpopulation of polar bears, birds, or deer that threatened the balance of the planet's combined ecosystem, mankind would have no problem murdering these animals in the billions to fix the problem. Isn't it funny how we overlook such ideas when it's our own "masters of the universe" species that is the problem?

Re:News?

[NemoinSpace]

I was going to mod you into oblivion, but preservation of your post will serve to remind me; people like you really exist.

The soulless anonymous coward dies a thousand deaths, the starving die but once.

Re:News?

[c6gunner]

It's sad that you got modded troll, since you're one of the few that seem to "get it". I'd only disagree with you on one thing:

And these third world countries were doing just fine before the europeans went and interfered with them... We really should just leave them alone to make their own way without interference.

They weren't doing "just fine" - they were miserable, poor, and died at an extremely early age from all sorts of easily curable diseases. The myth of the "noble savage" is a popular one, but it IS a myth.

Even if it were possible for us to just "leave them alone", it wouldn't be a solution. They'd only continue to stagnate. Some (ok, most) of our current efforts might be misguided and even counterproductive, but we ARE helping them to improve their situation, even if just slightly, over a long period of time. What we should be doing is funding micro-lending ventures, and funneling as much money as possible into educating the residents of relatively stable areas. Help them to help themselves, instead of just dropping "aid" on them and leaving them to fight over our scraps.

Re:News?

[rohan972]

If there isn't enough natural-born prey to hunt (ie: without resorting to breeding) and/or fauna to pick, then a larger population is _not supposed to exist_!

Supposed by whom? God? You? Who is this supposer that requires human populations to not exist except by hunter/gatherer subsistence, and why should we follow his dictates? We don't live by natural means. Artificial means made by human skill or produced by humans. By definition pretty much everything we do is not natural. Get used to it.

Re:News?

[linuxrocks123]

Yeah. Get it. You have kids; you have the whole "parental mind warp" thing that comes with it going (anyone who thinks Steve Jobs's reality distortion field is bad hasn't observed some parents...), and it makes me personally very happy that you love your children so much you'd probably be willing to cause a global thermonuclear holocaust and kill off the entire rest of the planet just so your oh so wonderful spawn could live.

But that doesn't really help solve the problem. Obviously children dying is bad, and we obviously want to stop that, but we also don't want them to sink into further dependence. And, a MAJOR part of the problem, actually ... is those children. Overpopulation is one of the worst aggravating factors of Africa's crisis.

Since we can't really kill the children, and we don't really want to let them die, we feed them. Then those children reach breeding age and soon afterwards create more children, which also need food. And the circle continues.

So what do we do? Well, a number of approaches have been proposed, including teaching the children how to not make more children the instant they become fertile. But it's really painfully obvious that we need to look further ahead than "stop them from starving", because we're just making the hole deeper. If you're sympathetic to their plight because you also reproduced, try to look for ways to stop the plight in the future, not just mitigate it in the present.

World Computer Exchange

[unteer]

I worked for the non-profit World Computer Exchange (http://worldcomputerexchange.org) and their entire effort is to provide working hardware (not software) to developing nations. They have been successful, a fact which I would attribute to their focusing on education and children's programs. But they do not simply dump machines on nations and then forget them, they also provide support and information on how to deal with e-waste in the developing nation. And though they aren't perfect (who is...?) I feel their efforts are worth noticing.

Easy!

[raehl]

Care to tell me how you'd deal with the epidemic of obesity in the west?

First, by West, you must mean US. There is no epidemic of obesity in Europe.

My solution is simple - the new "Can't catch it, can't eat it" policy. Worked for millions of years. Put it in place in stages.

Stage one is a ban on food delivery services. The morbidly obese will starve down to a weight where they can at least get into their cars and get to the drive thru.

Stage two is a ban on drive thrus, so people will starve down to a weight when they can actually get out of their cars and into the counter or grocery store to get their food.

Stage three is a weight limit on disabled parking passes. If you're so fat that you need a special parking permit to get to your food, you'll starve down to a weight where you can at least hobble in to get your food.

Stage four is a ban on any personal scooters or electric wheelchairs that can support more than 250 lbs. If you're too fat to propel yourself, you'll starve down to a weight where you can at least stand up on your own.

Stage five is the big one - the doors of any food retailer will no longer be allowed to be any wider than 20". Then people will at least starve down to a size where they can fit through the door.

See? Piece of cake. Er....