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Comment by HermanMartinus | Hacker News Reader

I second this opinion. Here's an older article which is less dramatised and talks about attempted interventions such as trying to get the recyclers to use wire strippers instead of burning: https://www.worstpolluted.org/projects_reports/display/107

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the guy doesn't have any shoes, where are these tools going to come from?

They were supplied with wire strippers. That was the intervention, not just the suggestion of wire strippers.

I'm pretty sure at the rates they get paid they'd be better off selling the wire strippers and keep burning the insulation.

Like this is Marie Antoinette tier behavior of someone so out of touch with reality from their own privilege they can't even see it. "Hello, I, a benevolent westerner have bestowed upon you a dirt cheap tool so you can keep digging through cancerous muck for pennies. Am I not a gracious god? Thanks bye"

Not only that. It feels like we (commenting as a U.S. reader seeing that one of the two organizations in the link behind the campaign is based out of N.Y.) are telling them how they should be playing with our waste after it has been discarded to them.

To be fair, the article cites "occupational" hazards in addition to the "ecological" ones, albeit with less (IMO) emphasis. I would hope that the actual campaign efforts in the field focused largely on those during outreach to recyclers.

Unless you're doing anything at all to help, maybe try being a little less cynical about the people who are.

I do agree with that, but at the exact same time, it is important to be critical of these actions and to understand our role and part in this. For me, thinking about this logically leads me to the conclusion that, while individual action can be good-willed, it is not enough to fix a systemic problem. Systemic problems need to be fixed with systemic actions, and that first step requires people to recognize and understand the problem.

The point that I read in your GP comment - and that I agree with - is that solutions need to be local: attuned to the local environment, which tends to imply invented by local people.

C.f. Mpesa; westerners generally wouldn't think of payment over SMS, because they don't have the right lenses.

Yeah i struggle with this as well. I don't know who GP is and maybe they are doing a ton, but every time I read a comment like this I think of a similar thing:

"Hello, I, a benevolent westerner am tasked with explaining how poor you are to others but will never think of you after today or do anything to improve your condition. However, I am very serious about my role of explaining how anyone that trys to help or implement incremental solutions is a bad person."

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