Ah-ha, but South Africa doesn't have poor telephonic infrastructure. It just has rampant crime. Let's not condone illegal activity, and let's not take a monolithic view of Africa.

But what about the wait till that wireless network gets installed? I doubt that stealing infrastructure is ever a good idea.

I think "content" in the following sentence is supposed to be "continent"?

"So, if basket making brings wireless to a content with a poor landline infrastructure, is that a bad thing?"
==== author's response follows ===
yes, thanks for the correction.

I meant continent because, having traveled a bit in Africa, I have noticed that whatever tourist trinkets become popular in one place are eventually sold in nearly every other nearby destination, and later are even distributed in Western countries. A good example of this is the fake ebony (black shoe leather dye on any dense wood) animal carvings that originated in East Africa. Those are even sold in curio shops in the US and I imagine Europe as well. The market for wire baskets is so huge, that the scale of this wire pilfering needs to be thought of globally. For every pound of vinyl coated copper wire swiped there are hundreds of pounds of additional raw materials and energy consumed that have toxic emissions. IT would be so much better if the natural materials were sold to this market or at least if actual waste wire was imported from nations that have an abundance of trashed wire.

Maybe car thieves should receive carbon credits if they only steal Hummers and cars that have below 10 mpg and receive time off for good behavior if the mercedes they steal is replaced with a Prius.
==== author's response follows ====
My intent in writing this post was to point out the irony that not not all recycling is inherently good. In this matter, it "takes two to tango": buyers and sellers. Buyers have a responsibility to think.

Haha, Timothy has an excellent point. But perhaps they shouldn't steal Benzes - those are actually pretty good cars - and should take Escalades or something...

Wireless phones can have a good effect. I remember hearing that Vietnam could not afford to build a network of phone lines across the country, so they built towers, and made cheap celphones available.

Those swaths through the jungle created by building and maintaining phone/electric lines are the easiest way to kill the forest. It makes a nice, easy route for people to access it for pillagin' and pollutin'.

My family and I operate a fair trade, non-profit called Bridge for Africa and we work with MANY crafters in KZN, South Africa. We personally know many of the telephone wire weaving groups in KZN and all of them purchase their telephone wire.

Bridge for African’s goal is to provide a sustainable living income for these crafters and false information like this makes it much, much harder to help those who need it most. You can read about Bridge for Africa’s telephone wire weaving group and see photos of spools of purchased telephone wire by visiting:

https://www.bridgeforafrica.org/catalog/zulu.php

My family and I operate a fair trade, non-profit called Bridge for Africa and we work with MANY crafters in KZN, South Africa. We personally know many of the telephone wire weaving groups in KZN and all of them purchase their telephone wire.

Bridge for African’s goal is to provide a sustainable living income for these crafters and false information like this makes it much, much harder to help those who need it most. You can read about Bridge for Africa’s telephone wire weaving group and see photos of spools of purchased telephone wire by visiting:

https://www.bridgeforafrica.org/catalog/zulu.php

Hello,

Check the following website for more information about Vietnam recycling. It is designed to promote and sponsor recycling activities in Vietnam.

Vietnam Recycling

Thank you!