Recycling and the Law in Africa

In cities throughout the developing world you'll find many people who make a living scouring trash heaps for recyclable materials. They sort through the garbage looking for cardboard, cotton, glass, or metal and they take what they find to recycling facilities where they're paid by the pound/kilo.

Now Hewlett-Packard and partners Empa and the Global Digital Solidarity Fund are working in South Africa to recycle the hazardous materials contained in electronics. Here's a story about these efforts from the Global Edition of the New York Times.

Interesting that in the nine months from February to November, 2008 19 people were employed at a facility in Cape Town (subsidized by HP & the SA government) that processed 60 tons of material and generated $14,000. Another plant is planned for Durban, South Africa, this one operating without subsidies, which indicates it's a potentially profit-making business.

As the story points out, more and more consumers in the developing world are using, and throwing away, electronic waste such as cellphones. Reusing this material makes good economic sense as well as good environmental sense. However, as the story also points out, this recycling model operates best when there is clear protection for workers and others against harms caused by using and disposing of these products. In countries where laws against personal injury or nuisance (or the civil law equivalent) don't exist or are not impartially enforced, or where worker safety regulations are non-existent, having such plants might generate a wide array of problems. This insight points out a critical concern in development: the role the law plays in creating a framework for economic growth. For more on this point see Kenneth Dam's book The Law-Growth Nexus.

In Africa and throughout the developing world, the creative talents of entrepreneurs will contribute most to economic growth when they are exercised within a secure legal framework.

- Karol