E-waste hell

Ever wondered where your old TVs and computers go after you send them off for recycling or to charity?

Dateline’s Giovana Vitola has found a mountain of old electronic equipment dumped in what were once picturesque wetlands in Ghana in West Africa.

Ghana has emerged as the E-Waste capital of the world. Alongside China, Nigeria, India, and Vietnam, Ghana has become one of the preeminent destinations for electronic waste.

“The dirty little secret is that when you take [your electronic waste] to a recycler, instead of throwing it in a trashcan, about 80 percent of that material, very quickly, finds itself on a container ship going to a 'third world country' where very dirty things happen to it.” Says Jim Puckett, the executive director of the Basel Action Network.

Although scavengers can make money selling salvaged pieces from these electronic graveyards, the process of gathering these materials is extremely toxic. “It’s the only part of the world where you’ll go and see thousands of women on any given day that are sitting… basically cooking printed circuit boards,” says Puckett. “As a result, they’re breathing all of the flame retardants and the lead and tin that are being heated up. You smell it in the air. You get headaches as soon as you enter this area.”

The e-waste is poisoning everything around it, including the scavenging children burning the wires to try and get at the valuable metal inside. Meanwhile, acrid smoke drifts across the Agbogbloshie area of the capital Accra, and even the city’s main food market.

Stamped across the equipment, the names of companies and government bodies in countries like Australia, Britain and the United States, with many hard drives still intact and containing potentially confidential information.

Exporting hazardous waste to developing countries is strictly regulated, so how is some of it ending up in Ghana illegally? Do the companies disposing of it even know what’s happening? And what do the Australian authorities plan to do about it?
More info here and here