Of particular interest to me and one reason why I blog about this here, is because it’s a very different though complimentary angle to a documentary I shot in 2005 in Lagos Nigeria, called The Digital Dump. In that piece, we exposed the underbelly of the global electronics waste trade, and how Africa was receiving the majority of the toxic trash that is a byproduct of our insatiable appetite for new consumer electronics, and how the toxics inside of them leach into the water table, are burned and melted to salvage copper and other valuable residuals, and are an overall environmental nightmare for the poor countries around the globe receiving the waste.

So on the front and the back end here, it’s an important reminder to again be asking ourselves what the consequences of our purchases are, where they are coming from, how they were produced, and what will happen to them when we are done with them, be it food, energy, or electronics.

The Digital Dump was produced by The Basel Action Network, a Seattle based NGO at the forefront of the global waste trade crisis. The film has been screened at film festivals around the world, at the UN, at many industrial trade conferences, and wrote about in the NYT, WSJ, and seen on PBS, 20/20 and many other media outlets around the world. The parody video was produced by The Enough Project, an anti-genocide organization doing very important work.

*In a rare blog post in response to the Kristof article, Steve Jobs of Apple claims that “We require all of our suppliers to certify in writing that they use conflict free materials. But honestly there is no way for them to be sure. Until someone invents a way to chemically trace minerals from the source mine, it’s a very difficult problem.”