Tag Archives: Nigeria

Earth

Your Electronic Goods Recycling Donations Become Bank Deposits

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Used and broken electronics such as computers, cellphones, dvd players, washers and dryers still hold intrinsic value because if you were to peer inside these things you’d notice a lot of wire and circuitry. There is a surprisingly substantial amount of copper, silver and gold waiting for “the recycling”.

Consumerism- the acquisition of goods, is largely based today on electronic devices- large screen televisions or smartphones for example. Many of us feel the need to upgrade regularly: bigger screens for our living rooms and faster and more powerful phones.  But in broad terms, our discarded electronic goods contain about the same amount of silver, copper, gold and platinum as the new items we are replacing them with.

How much value are we talking about?

It is difficult to determine an exact value of gold and other precious materials in an average cellphone. This is because no two models are exactly alike, no two batteries are exactly alike.

Lux Bringer from reddit.com:

All of a sudden these, “bring your old cellphones to us so we can recycle them for you” campaigns are making a lot more sense. Sneaky bastards.

 PtrN from reddit.com:PtrN                                                                                                         

I’m not sure. I’m seeing that the average cell phone has 1/8 a gram of gold in it from other comments. At the time of this writing, CNN currently has gold going at $1650USD per troy ounce. I crunched the numbers and am seeing that there is about $6.60USD worth of gold in a cellphone. Not too bad, but I don’t know how profitable it will be after you take into account the costs of transportation and the extraction process itself.

Thoust from reddit.com:

There are other materials in a phone they can salvage besides gold

professor_fatass from reddit.com:

According to the article you also get platinum, palladium, and copper. As well as the glass and plastic which may not be worth much but it can still be recycled.

Interesting isn’t it?

Let’s consider the price of copper. Right now in Canada it is just under 4$CDN per pound. If you’re keen and want to sell your own scrap copper you will need a lot of it. An average washing machine motor has about 8$CDN worth of copper wiring up for grabs. http://www.instructables.com/id/how-to-get-tons-of-free-enameled-copper-wire/http://priceofscrapmetal.com/how-to-sell-scrap-copper-wire/

Gold!

There is gold and platinum inside computer circuit boards and hard drives. Most of the gold is an alloy or plated over another metal but at highs predicted to reach near $1,8000USD per ounce- a high volume recycling effort will pay off.

Bleepin’ Animinion from bleepingcomputer.com:

Any, true recycling effort that would be of a profitable nature needs to be EPA approved. Due to the multiple hazardous materials mixed in with the minute amounts of precious metals. As well as the highly toxic removal and heavy metals separations processes. Also as an example it would take an average of one ton of random circuit-board waste to generate one pound of gold. Add to that electronic grade precious metals are not the expensive jewelry grade high dollar metals. Therefore looking at the gold market is not the price you would get. So the profit you would make on the precious metals would be eaten up by the fees and expense of waste disposal of the one ton of hazardous useless waste product left behind after you reclaimed the precious and hazardous heavy metals. This is definitely not a a project to undertake on a small scale in your garage.

This last quote is an important thing to consider.

If you are considering dropping off your scrap electronics and appliances ask the receiving party if they are environmentally approved and a member of an Electronic Stewardship.  After all, your discarded electronics will earn a tidy sum of money for a large scale salvager. The least they can do is operate within the law and operate with an environmental conscience. But there is some worry.

The salvagers are looking for an uninformed public- they set up their marketing and advertising in a way that makes no mention of the economic benefits they stand to make.

They seldom if ever offer you a small stipend for your ‘donated scrap’ and perhaps even worse, many pose as “good deed” companies ridding us of our “broken goods” destined for the landfill. The Ontario Electronic Stewardship  is a non-profit group that overseas responsible recycling of electronics.  This Stewardship works with existing legal frameworks put in place by Waste Diversion Ontario and the 2002 Waste Diversion Act.  www.wdo.ca

Social impact in the developing world.

In Southern China over 100,000 people including children spend their lives dismantling discarded electronic devices for scrap metal and an unknown number are doing the same thing in Nigeria.  http://www.economist.com/news/international/21570678-growing-mounds-electronic-scrap-can-mean-profits-or-scandals-cadmium-lining

In this file photo from 2001, a migrant child sits atop a pile of unrecyclable computer waste imported to Guiya, China, from other countries.

Basal Action Network

Some players are keeping it real.

Not every electronic device recycling campaign is shady.  Increasingly, not-for-profit groups and volunteer fire departments are setting up large recycling bins with signage such as “your donated scrap metal and electronics helps fund X”. 

If you are considering dropping off discarded electronics to your local “recycling and scrap drive” ask a few questions. Where are the profits from the salvaged materials going? Is the company operating the drive aware of the Ontario Electronic Stewardship guidelines? What happens to your donated goods at the end of the cycle- are they destined for a landfill or for China?

Politics

Report: Regulations on U.S. arms exports often skirted, rarely enforced

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SOMERVILLE, Mass.—While the United States likes to claim it has the gold standard of arms export control measures, in practice the measures offer few restrictions on U.S. presidents’ ability to ship arms wherever they like, according to a new report from the World Peace Foundation (WPF) at Tufts University’s The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

The Arms Export Control Act (AECE) of 1976, as well as the United States’ international obligations, are meant to ensure decisions to export arms take into account the potential to escalate conflict or fall into the hands of U.S. enemies. The AECA sets up Congress as a check on presidential decisions.

“The potential for arms sales to exacerbate a conflict rarely stops a sale,” said report author Jennifer Erickson, associate professor of political science and international studies at Boston College. “When we do restrain exports, more often than not, political calculations are at work, rather than the legal checks and balances Congress put in place.”

Among the key findings of On the Front Lines: Conflict Zones and U.S. Arms Exports:

  • Conflict is not a consistent deterrent for U.S. arms exports. The United States usually prioritizes diplomatic and economic ties in export decision making—regardless of the conflict status of the recipient.
  • Presidents face few restrictions on using arms sales to meet policy goals. U.S. law sets an almost unreachable vote threshold for Congress to block or modify arms sales.
  • Even when the U.S. chooses not to supply weapons to conflict zones, it can and does use alternative means, such as common allies, to get arms to combatants.
  • There is no realistic way for the U.S. government to guarantee the weapons it sells are used only by the buyer, in ways that conform with U.S. interests. We cannot ensure weapons are only used defensively, for instance. And arms have staying power. Years after initial sales, they may be used instead for priorities the U.S. opposes.
  • Interpretation of regulations may become looser still as the U.S. enters a “New Cold War” with China or Russia.

In coming to these conclusions, the report examines U.S. arms sales, and restraint, connected to recent conflicts in Libya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The World Peace Foundation commissioned similar studies on arms sales by the governments of the United Kingdom and France.

These studies follow earlier research by the WPF on which nations send arms into conflict zones, available on the website, Who Arms War? 

“The United States has all the regulations and policy tools it needs to ensure we do not make already dangerous places even more deadly,” said Alex de Waal, World Peace Foundation executive director and research professor at The Fletcher School. “We have mechanisms that can minimize the risk of America arming deadly actors. What we don’t seem to have is the political will to actually use those mechanisms. On numerous occasions American arms have made the world a more dangerous place, including for Americans.”

ABOUT THE WORLD PEACE FOUNDATION

Established by the publisher Edwin Ginn in 1910, the World Peace Foundation aims to “educate the people of all nations to a full knowledge of the waste and destructiveness of war and of preparation for war, its evil effects on present social conditions and on the wellbeing of future generations, and to promote international justice and the brotherhood of man, and generally by every practical means to promote peace and goodwill among all mankind.”

Culture

Canada Sent Untested Experimental Ebola Vaccine To WHO

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*translated from original Cuban-Spanish article from cubadebate.cu Ebola Quarantine

Vacunas-experimentales – ebola Mientras register more infections and deaths from ebola in several countries in Africa – the latest report is in Nigeria – death, Canada sent to the World Health Organization (who) an experimental vaccine being developed against the disease.

Gregory Taylor, Deputy Director of public health at the health agency of Canada, said that you between 800 and 1 000 doses of the vaccine, known as VSV-EBOV, doctors without borders were sent to a hospital in Geneva at the request of the who, and also to the organization.

The drug has not been used in humans, but Tuesday the ethics of the who panel said that the severity of the current epidemic in West Africa justifies the use of unapproved drugs.

The new fatality in Nigeria is a worker of the economic community of West African States (Ecowas) who died at age 36 in Lagos.

He informed the organization that had infected by having contact with the American Advisor to the Liberian Government, which flew in July to Lagos and there led disease. The man fainted at the airport and was treated without that were known at the beginning that it was ebola.

Since then, the employee of Ecowas was quarantined. His case raises three deaths by the virus in Nigeria, where there are more than 100 people in observation. Gambia, Ivory Coast and Zambia have suspended flights from that country for fear of contagion. Doctors without borders, which has hundreds of partners in West Africa, welcomed the decision of the who to use experimental drugs, but warned that they alone will not stop the problem and making it remains to increase massively the medical team.

As of August 9, 2014 there were about 1,800 confirmed and suspected cases of ebola in the region and more than 1,000 deaths, according to who figures.