Discussing the “Toxic Trade” of Recycled Electronics with Basel Action Network’s Jim Puckett
January 13, 2012
Jim Puckett is the Executive Director and founder of the Basel Action Network (BAN). Puckett has spent most of his working life in “toxic trade,” including 22 years at Greenpeace. Puckett has long been aware and concerned with the grimiest of toxic trade methods: Third World dumping.
In 2002, following a trip to China, BAN produced the film Exporting Harm, depicting exported toxic waste from the U.S. landing in China, where the most egregious forms of dumping are still taking place to this day.
“Nowadays, more and more things that we take for granted are electronic,” Puckett explains. “It wouldn’t be such a horrible problem were it not for the fact that it’s toxic waste. We have to be very careful how we deal with it.”