January

• BAN attends the Basel Convention's 19th Session of the Technical Working Group, 14-15 January 2002, the 1st Joint Meeting of the Technical Working Group and Legal Working Group, 16-17 January 2002, and the 4th Session of the Legal Working Group, 18-19 January 2002 in Geneva. Together with Greenpeace they submit new legal argumentation on Shipbreaking and the Legal Obligations Under the Basel Convention. BAN meets with the Chinese Delegation to confidentially relate our findings regarding the Electronic Waste Dumping in China.

February

• BAN together with the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and SCOPE of Pakistan and Toxics Link India, releases groundbreaking exposé entitled "Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia"on 25 February. It receives sensational coverage around the world and is featured in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Le Monde, Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, Seattle Post Intelligencer, AP, Reuters, BBC, NPR, Der Spiegel, Al-Jazeera, CNN etc.

March

• BAN attends the Electronic Products Recycling and Recovery (EPR2) Conference Washington D.C. and presents the world premiere of the video version of the report "Exporting Harm" to the conference as well as to the participants of the National Electronic Product Stewardship Initiative (NEPSI). The film is shown twice and BAN is praised highly for contributing greatly to the overall electronics waste debate with its Asian investigation.

April

• BAN represents all non-governmental environmental organizations in a special meeting of the Basel Convention held in Copenhagen to help draft and prioritize the strategic plan of the Basel Convention for the next ten years. BAN is instrumental in turning back an effort by Germany, Canada and Switzerland in hijacking the process to turn the Convention away from waste prevention and away from its goal of minimizing the transboundary movements of hazardous wastes.

May

• BAN attends the 2002 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment in San Francisco. BAN presents a paper and shows its film "Exporting Harm" and additionally gains support for its Recycler's Pledge of True Stewardship.
  
  
• BAN also attend a series of four Basel Convention meetings in Geneva: The Technical Working Group, the Legal Working Group, the Joint Technical and Legal Working Groups as well as the Committee on Implementation. Highlights of the meetings included BAN's call for the Parties to use the Electronics hazardous waste trade issue as a test case on how to curb illegal traffic in hazardous waste; BAN's showing of its film "Exporting Harm"; and the return towards the goal of waste prevention in the Convention's Strategic Plan.
  
  
• BAN also shows its film Exporting Harm to participants of the Recycling Council of British Columbia Conference held in Victoria, British Columbia in Canada.

June

• Victory! -- China officially announces that they will further crack down on illegal imports of electronic wastes and call on exporting countries to take responsibility for their wastes. BAN also releases an award to Germany for being the first country in the world to have ratified all four of the most important treaties dealing with toxic pollution -- "The Package of Four".

July

• Following New York City Officials halt of recycling programs and announcement that they might be pursuing exporting NYC garbage to a Caribbean country, BAN together in coalition with other key organizations released a press release vowing to block all such efforts.
  
  
• BAN's video "Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia" continues to sell briskly and becomes not only an educational coup but a fundraiser for BAN as well. It is shown on cable TV in Seattle and other cities as well.

August

• BAN issues Action Alert, Press Release and Comments, roundly criticizing the US Environmental Protection Agency for ignoring the findings of Exporting Harm and issuing a ruling for managing cathode ray tube (computer and TV monitors) waste in a way that allows for absolutely no controls whatsoever on exporting these hazardous wastes.
  
  
• China announces that it would be enforcing a longer list of previously banned imports of electronics wastes. This announcement is in response to the BAN/SVTC report "Exporting Harm".

September

• BAN presents the Electronic Waste dumping story to the US National Recycling Coalition (NRC) at their annual meeting in Austin, Texas.
  
  
• BAN and the Ban Mercury Working Group (co-founded by BAN) sends 4 representatives from around the world to the Global Mercury Assessment Working Group in Geneva, convened by the United Nations Environment Program. The meeting is a stunning success in that the United States is prevented from limiting the scope of the final assessment and the meeting concludes that mercury is a serious planetary threat warranting international action. The next step is determining what that action will be.
  
  
• Responding to the "Exporting Harm" dumping, China responds by seizing hundreds of container loads of electronic wastes entering their ports. A government official stated, "Foreign exporters usually throw electronic garbage to our country by all means for ill purposes."
  
  
• Thanks to generous grants from our supporting foundations, BAN hires another staffer, Sarah Westervelt to work on Electronic Waste dumping issue.

October

• BAN releases report "Exporting Harm: The Canadian Story" revealing Canada's role in the export of toxic computers to Asia. The report is released in a press conference in Vancouver held in conjunction with the Society for the Promotion of Environmental Conservation (SPEC) following the airing of a major documentary featuring BAN and Electronic waste on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) Magazine Marketplace.
  
  
• BAN helps prepare the visit of the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Toxic Waste Dumping, to Canada and alerts her to the Kirkland Lake PCB incineration proposal of Bennett company as well as to Canada's role in the dumping of toxic electronic waste in Asia.

November

• BAN releases an action alert to ask Canadian citizens to protest their government's policies on Waste Trade and the Basel Convention.
  
  
• Victory! -- Following BAN's request that China officially notify the Basel Convention Secretariat of its electronic waste import ban, Canada announces to all of its recyclers and brokers that the export of electonic waste to China from Canada is prohibited.
  
  
• BAN attends internationa gathering of activists as part of the congress of Interantional Campaign for Responsible Technology. Makes presentation on e-waste and Basel. Also film "Exporting Harm" is shown to very large gathering of students and faculty at San Jose State University.

December

• BAN attends the Sixth Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention and presses there for a Strategic Plan that reflects the goals of the Basel Declaration -- that is an emphasis on waste prevention. BAN's Ravi Agarwal makes a presentation regarding electronic waste at the Ministerial Session.
  
  
• BAN holds press conference at COP6 jointly with Greenpeace to denounce the plans of the United States to resume export of obsolete naval vessels laden with PCBs and asbestos to developing countries.