List of quotes attributed to the BAN:
The disagreement begins with the very definition of what E-waste actually is. The OECD, UN and BAN have all composed lists of toxic elements, and E-waste that contains these substances cannot be exported. But the lists of each organization categorizes elements differently. Consequently, what is illegal to transport according one organization, can be perfectly legal according to another."
Meta-Actor: Journalism
Source Document: http://www.twn.my/twnf/2014/4127.htm
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"That's just what Puckett said Basel Action Network is building now, with a new third-party certification system called e-Stewards that will replace the pledge program. But because the effort is funded in part by donations from the industry - including $50,000 from ERI itself - Hogye is skeptical, saying it poses a potential pay-to-play conflict. "If you pay enough money you can be certified for anything," said Hogye. "Quite frankly, this is a means of advertising." Shegerian disagreed, saying the network needs financial support to be an industry watchdog. "If people who care don't fund it, it's just not going to exist," he said."
Meta-Actor: Journalism
Source Document: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/news/story/2010/dec/07/recyclers-obey-ban-toxic-e-waste-selling-it-overse/36363/
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"BAN, together with the Electronic TakeBack Coalition of which it is a part, has long opposed the use of prison labor because it subjects vulnerable prison populations to hazardous substances, provides for an unfair taxpayer funded subsidy which hurts the private sector development of recycling infrastructure, and allows criminals to inappropriate access to sensitive private data found on hard drives and other data media.
Meta-Actor: Not-for-Profit
Source Document: http://archive.ban.org/ban_news/2010/101022_caught_exporting.html
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Basel Action Network argued against an exemption from the ban for repairable electronics at a meeting of the Basel Convention in Geneva, Switzerland, in May, because repairable equipment inevitably includes parts that are discarded, Puckett said. The exemption was defeated."
Meta-Actor: Journalism
Source Document: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/09/26/e-waste-empire-middlebury-vermont-discarded-electronics/2880359/
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However, according to BAN, which runs it's own 'e-Stewards' accreditation program, any voluntary survey asking respondents to report illegal activity will not produce reliable data. "It's like asking people if they cheat on their taxes and then expecting an accurate result," comments Puckett. "If it were that easy, the EPA would not be spending more than a million dollars right now to try to quantify volumes and waste flows from the U.S."
Meta-Actor: Journalism
Source Document: https://waste-management-world.com/a/e-waste-exports-an-inconvenient-truth
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"Because the United States has not ratified the Basel Convention or its Ban Amendment, and has few domestic federal laws forbidding the export of toxic waste, the Basel Action Network estimates that about 80% of the electronic waste directed to recycling in the U.S. does not get recycled there at all, but is put on container ships and sent to countries such as China. This figure is disputed as an exaggeration by the EPA, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, and the World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association.
Meta-Actor: Not-for-Profit
Source Document: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste
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An initial analytical cut through BAN's claim tells us the following:
That BAN attributes the statistic of 50-80 percent to 'informed industry insiders' and 'very knowledgeable and informed industry sources', yet does not state who the sources are except in one instance (a phone interview with Mike Magliaro). Notice a very important shift that occurs within BAN's report then: a single attributed source is pluralized. The one becomes the several. This is a move that suggests there are many experts that make the same estimate about e-waste exports. The photograph of asset tags that appears on p. 14 contains three such tags: one from the City of Los Angeles, one from the State of California, and one from the L.A. Unified School District. Together with the caption, the report implies that these tags are a mere selection out of an undisclosed number of such tags collected and photographed by BAN. So the photograph and the caption, work in combination to expand or pluralize the evidence said to support the 50-80 percent estimate. Thus, as in the previous point, three instances are made more plural. At the same time the report gives no information about how the asset tags were collected that would let a reader know whether those that are pictured on p. 14 come from some sort of systematic sample or not.
Meta-Actor: Other
Source Document: http://scalar.usc.edu/works/reassembling-rubbish/mapping-e-waste-as-a-controversy-from-statements-to-debates
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""You can export anything as long as it's tested and functional and nonhazardous," Puckett said.
BAN contends countries in Africa and elsewhere trying to get the electronic hand-me-downs of the industrialized world — reusable computers, stereos and more — instead are shipped up to 80% useless e-waste. In primitive workshops, workers extract precious metals from circuit boards by burning them, exposing themselves to toxic fumes."
Meta-Actor: Journalism
Source Document: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/09/26/e-waste-empire-middlebury-vermont-discarded-electronics/2880359/
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