This paper discusses research on electronic waste in Canada and

In this paper, we map the international trade in electronic waste (e-waste). We quantify the directions and magnitude of this trade at the global scale and examine the utility of the pollution haven hypothesis

This paper provides a synopsis of the changing geography of global trade in electronic waste over time using data available from the United Nations COMTRADE database. It quantifies the magnitude and direction of this trade between 206 territories in over 9400 reported trade transactions between 1996 and 2012. The results demonstrate two key findings. First, at its peak in 1996, trade from territories designated as Annex VII under the Basel Convention ('developed' countries) to non-Annex VII territories ('developing' countries) accounted for just over 35% of total trade. By 2012 trade from Annex VII to non-Annex VII territories accounted for less than 1% of total trade. Second, between 1996 and 2012 the two groups of territories evolved different regional trade orientations: Annex VII territories are predominantly trading intra-regionally, with 73-82% of total trade moving between Annex VII territories. In contrast, non-Annex VII territories are mostly trading inter-regionally: by 2012 less than one-quarter of non-Annex VII trade moved to other non-Annex VII territories with the rest moving to Annex VII territories. The results are congruent with an emerging body of research that profoundly troubles the dominant conceptual and policy framings of the global e-waste problem. Solving that problem will not happen if it is imagined as one predominantly characterised by dumping of e-waste from rich, 'developed' countries of the 'global North' in poor, 'developing' countries of the 'global South'. A reframing of the issue of e-waste is necessary to productively enrich the conceptualisation and policy discussion of e-waste as an issue of environmental and economic politics and justice.

ABSTRACT. There is growing empirical and theoretical interest in post-consumption activity that results in the capture and creation of value from waste in the global economy. This article engages with two dominant approaches to tracing the capture and creation of value, global value chains (GVCs) and global production networks (GPNs), and their shared call to examine waste disposal and recycling. Using non-participant observation, semistructured interviews, and a survey we examine what happens to the products of one of GVCs' and GPNs' paradigmatic industries, electronics, when they are labelled e-waste and are imported into Dhaka, Bangladesh, as rubbish electronics. Rather than wasting and final disposal predominating, our research documents a substantial rubbish recovery economy that captures and creates value anew. Consequently, we argue that both GVC and GPN approaches must rethink how they theorize the capture and creation of value.

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What do cities look like when rubbish electronics are the vehicle with which they are explored? This article is an experiment designed to offer a response to that question, and in doing so to productively intervene in the conversation about 'cityness ', 'metrocentricity' and 'subaltern urbanism'. We intervene by following flows of rubbish electronics and the action that enacts them as waste and value, drawing on fieldwork in Dhaka, Singapore, Accra and Canada's Greater Golden Horseshoe. Our intervention is an experiment in writ ing an urban geography of rubbish electronics as a site multiple. We show how follow ing the circulation of rubbish electronics offers a manyfolded synopsis of cities: urban enclaves of high finance and the information economy are also industrial waste producers. Peri urban industrial zones are also managers of brands, legal liability and corporate public relations. Cities off the map are also urban innovation systems, while waste is rekindled as value and accumulated as poison. Thereby we suggest how a sensitivity to the site multiple may be a helpful way of grappling with shifting ontology and the performativity of our research practices in urban studies.'to live in one city today means living in many, as any individual city folds in and stretches itself across urban experiences, information, and economies throughout the world. ' AbdouMaliq Simone (2010: xiii)

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