Agbogbloshie: The World's Largest e-Waste Dump

kc123 writes "Photographer Kevin McElvaney documents Agbogbloshie, a former wetland in Accra, Ghana, which is home to the world's largest e-waste dumping site. Boys and young men smash devices to get to the metals, especially copper. Injuries, such as burns, untreated wounds, eye damage, lung and back problems, go hand in hand with chronic nausea, anorexia, debilitating headaches and respiratory problems. Most workers die from cancer in their 20s."

Comments

I try to do the right thing

[gatkinso]

Dispose of my stuff in the proscribed manner at the municipal dump. TV's here, computers there, light bulbs in that shed, batteries one over.... but how do I know they aren't just paying to have that stuff shipped overseas?

E waste. Plastic in the ocean. Pharmaceutical water contamination. We are f'ed.

Re:I try to do the right thing

[WWJohnBrowningDo]

Dispose of my stuff in the proscribed manner at the municipal dump.

It's probably not smart to brag about your illegal activities on the Internet :)

Re:I try to do the right thing

[macraig]

Are you just baiting us or do you really not know? Overseas is EXACTLY where all that stuff goes. Virtually none of it remains to be processed in the United States. Much of it also winds up in similar locations in China.

Re:I try to do the right thing

[Burdell]

False. Yet another endlessly repeated "truth" based on invalid or non-existent studies.

Re:I try to do the right thing

[rtb61]

The United States International Trade Commission, "the agency determines the impact of imports on U.S. industries", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U..., when they asked companies for what they thought for marketing purpose how much waste they dump in foreign markets, those companies replied we do not dump waste, we buy waste disposal services at world competitive rates and what those waste disposal services according to the paper work they receive, they dispose of it according to law in the countries where it is dumped 'er' recycled.

When you sell it to a disposal company and they dump it in foreign markets you are dumping it in foreign market forget the PR=B$ especially from a government department that is just chock a block full of political appointees and is lead around by the nose by US corporate political campaign donors. From them you will get the "truth" but most definitely not the truth.

Re:I try to do the right thing

[macraig]

That is contrary evidence that I'm not prepared to dispute, but I still have to wonder where all the CRTs and American-looking PC chassis in TFA's photos might have come from, if not the United States?

Re:I try to do the right thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Cancer or chronic heavy metal poisoning is a better alternative to no income??

Re:I try to do the right thing

[Mashiki]

While there might be some "truth" to that story, it's sure not all be done here. You can bet that many companies who are full of overstock on materials to reclaim find it easier to rent a few dozen cargo containers and simply pack them full and file them over. And since we inspect under 1% of the outgoing and less than 3% of the incoming, you're just trusting that "commercial recyclable waste" isn't electronic components, but bulk metal, and so on. My time as a shipper/receiver for a company over a decade ago has long since left me that there's any truth or usefulness in the massive paperwork scheme that exists today.

Re:I try to do the right thing

[TheGratefulNet]

there have been reports of, when you turn your stuff into a 'recycling center' that they simply just throw it away, old school style, or send it to some 3rd world country for them to deal with.

maybe it was on a penn/teller show, I forget.

Re:I try to do the right thing

[wonkey_monkey]

American-looking PC chassis

As opposed to the foreign-looking ones they have in other countries?

Re:I try to do the right thing

[macraig]

Hey, they looked American to me! Doesn't Dell have a patent on fan grills and such?

Re:I try to do the right thing

[Charliemopps]

You put it in a black garbage bag and throw it in with the general trash. The way I look at it, it's better that we're polluting our own country than fucking up one that barely has a government and the people have little say in what we dump there.

I've known about these African cesspools for at least 10 years now (I think they featured them on 60min once) and I've refused to "properly" dispose of my e-waste ever since. I also refuse to participate in e-waste programs at work and take the opportunity to inform as many people as possible of the situation but most people refuse to believe me and think that the programs actually recycle the material!

Another small bit of info: There are also teams of kids combing the dumps for hard-drives as they're worth money to people that search them for financial information, passwords, etc...

Re:I try to do the right thing

[Anonymous Coward]

And Dell don't sell out side the US. Little known fact. IBM never sell a thing out side the US. Apple... The reason the Brits hate America is while they get the adverts no units are ever sold in the UK.

Re:I try to do the right thing

[H0p313ss]

I assume you're joking

I would have guessed that US-UK relations have taken a turn for the worse due to Dell customer support.

Re:I try to do the right thing

[toddestan]

Actually, I noticed that picture too. The three in middle lack an ATX connector plate, have the IEC female connector for the monitor power, and have eight slots for expansion slots. Those are old PCs, probably 286's or 386's. Maybe a 486. That does kind of suggest the US, because back then (late 80's, early 90's) most of the IBM-compatibles were sold in the US, though they were certainly available overseas. Probably kind of unusual to run across something like that in what must be a sea of discarded P4's and Athlon's. Maybe that's why they appear to have been saved? Some of that stuff actually can fetch a decent dollar on eBay in working condition thanks to the whole retro gaming thing.

Re:I try to do the right thing

[macraig]

I have a working '486 VLB motherboard system myself, 4 MEGAbytes of RAM, wow! I had the parts mothballed for decades and last year finally rebuilt a working system from it. I should be one of the people selling that stuff on eBay....

Most workers die from cancer in their 20s

[Anonymous Coward]

If any statement needs a fact checking, that one does. I call bullshit.

Re:Most workers die from cancer in their 20s

[Squiggle]

Couldn't find much about cancer rates except people repeating that particular line. However, this seems reiable and seems pretty deadly:
from http://www.worstpolluted.org/p...
"Samples taken around the perimeter of Agbogbloshie, for instance, found a presence of lead levels as high as 18,125 ppm in soil."
From wikipedia:
"No safe threshold for lead exposure has been discovered—that is, there is no known sufficiently small amount of lead that will not cause harm to the body."

Re:Most workers die from cancer in their 20s

[Anonymous Coward]

"No safe threshold for lead exposure has been discovered—that is, there is no known sufficiently small amount of lead that will not cause harm to the body."

When you get down to levels in natural streams that people and animals are able to live off without any obvious consequences, in the sub-ppb level, then you are effectively safe in this context considering:

"Samples taken around the perimeter of Agbogbloshie, for instance, found a presence of lead levels as high as 18,125 ppm in soil."

Assuming that is using a comma as a thousands separator, that is 1.8% lead content in the soil, that is ten times as much lead per weight than leaded fuel, and on par or more than the amount of lead in lead based paints.

Re:Most workers die from cancer in their 20s

[ShanghaiBill]

"No safe threshold for lead exposure has been discovered"

Yes, it is true that lead is dangerous. Lead poisoning can cause mental retardation, and even death. But there is little evidence that it causes cancer. It kills you in other ways. So if it is true that "most workers die from cancer in their 20s", it is not the lead that is causing it. Most likely that "factoid" was just made up by some journalist. Ghana is not that poor compared to the rest of Africa, and I doubt that these people would be stupid enough to engage in an activity if it was really an automatic death sentence.

Re:Most workers die from cancer in their 20s

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah probably bullshit, they don't have time to develop cancer, they die off from lung diseases, heavy metal poisoning and all that fun way before cancer has time to kick in.

Probably impossible to get accurate stats anyway, nobody bothers to count how many live/die and who bothers putting a diagnosis on what killed them.

Re:Most workers die from cancer in their 20s

[dbIII]

Maybe not stupid. Desperate with people to send money back to perhaps. History is full of people selling themselves into everything up to and including a short life as a slave for the benefit of people they care about.
Plus at 20 anyone that doesn't know better feels pretty fucking invincible. They could see it as a death sentence for the unlucky.
One of my grandfathers worked at an arsenic mine that was badly run. In hindsight it was an automatic death sentence but it took three decades for everyone who worked there to die. Of course I never met him to hear what people thought about it at the time.

Re:Most workers die from cancer in their 20s

[toddestan]

Actually, the "recycling" process (if you want to call it that) is pretty complete. Circuit boards are stripped of their components, which are then soaked in acid to recover the metals. What's left of the circuit boards are burned along with the plastics. Wire is burned to get rid of the insulation, and the left over copper recycled. Metal parts are recycled. Glass is smelted down to recover the lead. There actually isn't much left once it's been "processed".

Finally

[oldhack]

Headline that's complete gibberish.

Re:Something I threw away may have killed someone

[ackthpt]

This is serious. Not throwing away my e-waste unless I can be sure someone is not going to die from it. We are acting like savages!

You aren't acting like a savage - the people who dispose of it for a living or enrichment, without a care to what they've stuck in some bog, river or former farmland, those are savages. Rather like the cretins who roam our backroads, looking for a clear chance to unload their trash, rather than take it to a proper disposal site.

Much of what's in Ghana has been exported from the first world, to the third world, where people live (even if briefly) on scavenging. This isn't much different from the very depressing and massive ewaste dumps in China.

I was told and old IBM 360 system was being trucked to Savannah, Georgia, where it would go aboard a ship and taken to China, where families would bid upon bits of the system, which they'd take home and extract copper, gold and anything else of value - you can do the math yourself to figure what they did with the remains.

this should be illegal.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry it should not be legal to enable the killing of others!

Re:What's the point of this?

[FictionPimp]

It could inspire us to support companies that actually do recycling rather than dumping. It could inspire you to pay to recycle your phone rather than toss it in the trash. It could inspire you to push for consumer options that create less e-waste. It could inspire you to donate to a research project or start one to find a industrial use for e-waste.

It could even just be simply to inform you that people are suffering because of greed. News does not always need you to take action. Sometimes its purpose is just to inform.

Re:What's the point of this?

[Garridan]

Right... so... you want to be sheltered from the worst news from the unprivileged, because you feel powerless to stop it? Tell that to the people in that situation, with significantly less power to stop it! Yes! Let's not talk about the bad things in the world unless the newspiece has a button that you can personally click to solve that problem. That's exactly how problem-solving works. Who knows why the press never thought of that!

Re:What's the point of this?

[skids]

Awareness is only useful if it can lead to change for the better. Knowing about this is not helpful, at least to me.

There's a difference between knowing it as a vanilla fact and seeing it, so yes, awareness on a more motivational level, which might lead to change, eventually. I could see pressure being put on companies to market products with a verified disposal program, but we've got a long way to go just pressuring them to use decent workplaces, so it will probably be a while. Still, bringing the reality home helps us keep in mind what everntually needs to happen.

Of course the natural reaction of some will be to hang on to power-hungry older electronics and machinery over newer more efficient models, which depending on the exact device in question, may or may not do any good in the larger picture.

(I've got a cellar full of cat litter pails full of old e-waste I can't bring myself to hand over to anyone, given I don't trust any of the available recipients. Way more than I need to scavange the occasional diode or transistor off of.)

This is a Hoax

[retroworks]

- Cities in Africa have had TVs for decades, generate their own "e-waste". Nigeria had 6.9M households with TV in 2007 (World Bank)

- According to the UN, the 6B people in "emerging markets" generate far more e-waste, and far more ewaste trade, than OECD nations.

- African importers have no financial interest in paying to import junk.

- UNEP studies of seized "e-waste" in Lagos and Accra found 91% reuse and repair, better than brand new sales.

- The Western Accuser (BAN.org) earns money from "certifying" that recyclers don't export, has a $$ interest in the accusations

The Western Accuser admits to fabricating the statistics about 80% e-waste exports. They lied and admit they lied. http://retroworks.blogspot.com...

These stories belittle the techs in Africa who tinker and repair, for financial gain among manufacturers intent on "planned obsolescence". "Parasites of the poor" is the label for these stories in Africa.

Re:This is a Hoax

[skids]

It's not a hoax. It's a complicated issue, with advocates from multiple sides of the issue *all* playing fast and loose with the "facts", since they are mostly PR advocates. Reading that comment thread really was an excruciating reminder that some people will take an argument to great length for its own sake, or for the sake of a grudge.

E.G. it does not matter much whether a TV with 1 year of life left in it goes directly into a third-world dump, or spends a year in a house before it gets there. It does matter if a used cell phone allows a farmer to arrange to hire some seasonal labor without walking to town to do so. Two scenarios, two totally different equations.

Re:This is a Hoax

[Anonymous Coward]

with advocates from multiple sides of the issue *all* playing fast and loose with the "facts"

When doesn't an advocate play fast and loose with the facts?

Re:This is a Hoax

[AmiMoJo]

The third world is undoubtedly bad, but the only way we can get them to clean up is if we clean ourselves up first. If we create products that are easier to recycle and then develop disposal systems that avoid dumping them poorer nations will soon join in because there is money to be made. We treat waste like a problem we have to pay to make go away, where as these guys have already figured out that it can be profitable if you don't care about health and safety.

Additionally the US is doing quite badly compared to Europe. Were are your restrictions on exporting to places that dump, or your equivalent of RoHS? The bar has been set.

Re:This is a Hoax

[khallow]

What exactly is supposed to be the problem here? The only way "we" get the third world to clean up is by making them part of the first world. The first world went through its own polluting stage and it came out fine.

Re:This is a Hoax

[khallow]

The first world came out fine thanks to advantages it had when it was developing, advantages that the third world does not have today.

And we see that your "advantages" are:

First, there was no first world before the first world. This meant there was little pressure from above, because there was no "above". There were less/no AGW alarmists and tree huggers getting in the way of industrious businesses from improving the economy necessary to pull a society into the first world.

Normally, people would consider a working example as an advantage.

Second, pollution s not seen as a huge global problem. Your country pollutes? That's your problem. The notion that we're in a global village and your pollution will affect the whole world later was yet to be popularized (one reason being there were less AGW alarmists pushing the narrative)

Ok, where's the disadvantage here? I thought at first you were speaking of pollution holding back the third world. Or that somehow there was a global aspect to pollution which was relevant to your claim.

But that's not what you actually wrote. With this and the previous paragraph, you seem to saying that some people thinking pollution is a big deal and some people don't. While that is what I'd consider a fact, it is a fact which is completely irrelevant.

Third, the world economy was less globalized. Globalization increased the effects of international pressure, but not from AGW alarmists. The pressure comes from owners and shareholders, and they pressure third world factories to keep working and polluting to keep up production.

Such as the pressure to control corruption, upgrade one's society to first world levels, and improve the well-being of one's citizens? A pressure which accompanies a surge of wealth with which to accommodate the pressure? Again, where is the argument here?

And that pressure existed in the first world as well, yet things turned out well anyway.

Furthermore, globalization creates a moral hazard covering up the harms of pollution. After all, Pollution Respects Distance, so the owner of the factory doesn't see the damage he's doing, nor would other first worlders enjoying the products made by that factory. The third world people who are suffering are too far away to be able to seek compensation.

Reading stuff like this, I get the impression that some people out there think it's a law of physics that belching smokestacks must exist somewhere in the universe in order for us to have a nice civilization. It's just not true.

There will always be some degree of pollution and other externalities just because we're human. The developed world has demonstrated that this can be controlled. The rest of world in turn is following that same path.

Re:This is a Hoax

[retroworks]

Hmm. A CRT with one year left of life on it? That would be, what, a 24 year old CRT? Those are what is photographed at the Agbogbloshie and Lagos dumps, for sure. But when UN examined the sea containers, and Greenpeace filmed them, they found 10 year old TVs, some taken from hotel - flat-screen-replacements. The hypothesis that the Africans are buying goods that will only last an average of one year is an interesting one, but I don't think they could accomplish that buying used product even if they tried. And the Africans I know try the opposite, try to find the newest and best and most reliable brands (they won't buy an e-Machine).

You seem to imply I'm playing fast and loose with facts, and that while you concede the NGO falsified data, you attempt to create a middle ground by insinuating that I've made up data, too. But your only response to my data is an insinuation that the imported TVs, what.. typically? have 1 year left of life. That is as true as saying that the used printing presses Benjamin Franklin purchased in London, at 19 years old, and brought back to Philadelphia, were "probably" going to fail in a year and pollute Philadelphia. And that Africa will be better off buying brand new devices, which creates more coltan and conlfilct mining jobs for Africans.

The photos in the Guardian are kids at a dump. If you send white kids to a Texas dump, they will find 25 year old TVs to stand on, but it does not mean that the Japanese sent old TVs to USA dumps. The difference is that EU and USA voluntarily upgrade to brand new TVs after only 10 years, leaving devices with 15 more years of life on them in their attics, at the dumps, in a recycling shredder, or sold to an African who needs a TV for 10-15 more years and cannot for the life of him afford a new one.

Largest E-Waste Dump? Hoax

[Anonymous Coward]

Compare the photos in the Slashdot submission to these http://shanghaiscrap.com/2012/...

And none of the TVs in this photo were imported from western nations. None of them. So, of the 1% of these shown in TFA, how many were actually imported? Or is the point to think about the sad Negro children paid $1 to stand on the husks of TVs thrown out by African cities?

Worst of the bunch

[Blaskowicz]

This is what you come upon when you go filming the poor amongst the poor. Yet again a relatively small are is shown, this time around the RT monitor stands. It looks like a problem of law enforcement, lack of recycling infrastructure for terminal waste and lack of employment for these people.
Don't fall for e-waste scare again. Actual numbers tell that the vast majority of it is recycled and reused. This was covered already but here's one witness example :
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

"A handful of countries in the developed world don't like the ban," Puckett said. "Some countries have ratified the Basel Convention but don't agree to the ban."

Ingenthron disagrees with the definition of electronic equipment exported for repair as hazardous. He said those exports account for about 8% of the 13 million pounds Good Point processes, and provide a livelihood for Third World entrepreneurs.

Wahab Mohammed, 36, of Accra, Ghana, relies on Good Point to provide an inventory of used computers and more for his business in Ghana.

"I buy TVs, computers, speakers, amplifiers and stereos," Wahab said last month as he roamed the maze of shrink-wrapped mountains of equipment at Good Point. "When I take them back I have people who work for me. We resell everything, 80% to 90% we're able to make it work."

Wahab tries to make the pilgrimage to Good Point every three or four months, splitting his time between Middlebury and Accra. He's planning to open a recycling plant in Ghana.

"In Africa laptops cost more than here brand new," Wahab said. "My customers appreciate me bringing in used laptops they're able to buy for $100. I still make money."

In fact what you see in TFA is not our waste, but Ghanans's waste. The news is they're dumping CRT PC monitors (looks like 17 inchers), probably because they're too expensive to run, and some of them may just have failed.
Africans don't want to buy our discarded CRTs these days and no goodwill organisation will pay for the shipping either.

I would also like to know what happens to TFA's pile of five PC on the moped. "PCs and electronic devices that look in reasonable condition are sold untested in Accra". Well three are AT, so a bit crap (but may contain hard drives, etc., and may serve some limited use or as thin clients), two are ATX and so are USB, can do MP3 playback, file transfers to from USB flash drives or cell phones, word processing or accounting ; probably divx playback (the bottom one is color-coded, thus powerful) . Just don't turn it on often.

Re:Worst of the bunch

[drinkypoo]

In fact what you see in TFA is not our waste, but Ghanans's waste. The news is they're dumping CRT PC monitors (looks like 17 inchers), probably because they're too expensive to run, and some of them may just have failed.

You're really a colossal idiot if you don't think we're still disposing of monitors. I still see people selling them on craigslist every day, let alone giving them away.

Re:Worst of the bunch

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> Ghana...(looks like 17-inchers)

There's a politically incorrect joke in there somewhere, I'm sure of it.

Re:Worst of the bunch

[n1ywb]

We are still disposing of them, yes, there's always crates full of them at the dump (in Vermont). There's no used market for them though. I see people trying to sell them, but I never see anybody buy them. Their value is in the negative numbers; IE you typically have to pay to get rid of them. Even the thrift stores sell LCDs now. Only a fool would pay money for a CRT in this market.

Re:Worst of the bunch

[drinkypoo]

Their value is in the negative numbers; IE you typically have to pay to get rid of them.

And that is how they end up in a former wetland, being used as a stepping stone.

Only a fool would pay money for a CRT in this market.

There's one born every minute, and he's soon parted from his money.

Re:What's the point of this?

[fustakrakich]

Let's not talk about the bad things in the world unless the newspiece has a button that you can personally click to solve that problem.

Have you tried killall?

Re:What's the point of this?

[geminidomino]

killall | god | sort > out.dat

Re:What's the point of this?

[DarwinSurvivor]

Yes, that would have been a very good message to give, had they listed ANY reputable companies as alternatives. This article gives practically no information. Other than photo captions, the slashdot "summary" is actually LONGER than the entire article.

This is nothing more than a heart-string sensationalist article to up their viewership. Had the author actually cared about these people they would have listed the companies responsible for this crap, and the reputable companies that actually recycle the materials properly instead of literally putting the people on little monitor-soapboxes (yes literally, check out the photos) and adding sad captions like some twisted version of lolcats.

Re:Something I threw away may have killed someone

[AlphaWolf_HK]

If you throw away e-waste, it ends up in a domestic landfill at the worst, recycled in a domestic processing plant at best.

http://www.bloombergview.com/a...

It's actually the used computer equipment that gets sold to the third world that ends up in places like Africa. They do actually end up using most of it, until it either breaks or they find something better, and NOBODY buys their used stuff, so THAT stuff ends up in these photographs you are seeing here. The only way WE can prevent that is to completely deny the third world access to technology, which I don't think is an ideal situation.

But basically this is unwarranted environmental alarmism, exactly like the imagined (and never realized, and never will be realized) threat of so called overflowing landfills:

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Re:Anorexia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Loss of appetite is implied. This is typical of people who's bodies are in general distress (re: poison, which cancers tend to generate, and exists in e-waste). This innocuous mention, is subtle but prominently descriptive when talking about an area with a high rate of cancer.

One mobile device per company policy

[invictusvoyd]

In 2013 1.81 billion mobile devices were shipped. Half of them are going to become (deliberately? ) obsolete by 2015.

If China had not implimented the one child policy decades ago , they would have the worlds largest landfills today!

One mobile device per company !!! is the need of the hour. Besides that will keep the devices sane and force them to include all features into one flat priced device.

Re:What's the point of this?

[whistlingtony]

Look up Free Geek. I'm in Portland, and I do volunteer work with them. Perhaps the point of the story is to raise awareness and get you to make sure your e-waste is reused or recycled properly in your own community. Perhaps you'll start a Free Geek where you are.

There is a problem. The first step is to acknowledge that there is a problem. The second step is to do something about it, and your Logical Fallacy (black and white) about giving up tech is... Apathetic. Apathetic is a polite word. Your complete lack of empathy for other people is ... sociopathic? Really, wow man. Thanks for what you do, but... wow. What an attitude to have about your fellow man. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. ...... Care.

I feel bad for the cows...

[Kevin Fishburne]

...but it's not as bad as this:

http://eightvirtues.com/misc/2...
http://www.npr.org/2014/02/21/...

What in the unholy hell is wrong with people? I'm not religious, but my God.

Re:Something I threw away may have killed someone

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we acting like savages or are we helping these people?
Sure 'processing' this waste might kill them in a decade, but starvation without the cash this waste brings in could kill them in a couple of weeks.
The situation is kind of like the one with prostitution. People like to moralize how prostitution is wrong and degrading to women, but they never give a though to how those women would survive if prostitution was stopped.

Re:Something I threw away may have killed someone

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way WE can prevent that is to completely deny the third world access to technology, which I don't think is an ideal situation.

That's exactly right. If you stem the flow of "e-waste" to Africa you also deny access to second hand affordable computer technology. This type of of environmentalism confuses the cause - extreme poverty - with it's effects. Those people are inhaling toxic fumes for a living because they don't have a better economic choice. If you stem the flow of "e-waste", those kids will end up none the better, maybe sold as slaves on a cocoa plantation or in a brothel.

Instead of applying a 1st wold view "pollution=bad", you need to fix the economic and institutional problems of those countries. Denying them access to affordable 3-5 years old computers is not a solution. Shredding said computers, the production of which took a massive environmental toll in countries like China, is an environmental crime if they are still usable.

Yes, poverty is very ecological. You can die of starvation and faithfully observe Malthusian law with no impact on the environment. But poor people want to live and they will do anything regardless of it's impact on "the environment".

Re:What's the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hope you need sudo to do that.

Original articles: links

[advid.net]

Quoting previous articles:

In Pictures: Ghana's e-waste magnet
E-waste at the Agbogbloshie dumpsite near Accra has created a socio-economic and environmental disaster.
Kevin McElvaney, 12 Feb 2014

Inside Ghana's electronic wasteland
Dangerous practice of burning electronic waste to extract metals could be made safely obsolete.
Chris Stein, 02 Nov 2013

Why burning?

[abies]

Why they are burning this stuff?
I understand picking through it to find sellable parts, possibly smashing it down to extract some metal etc, but why burn the rest? To save the space?

Re:Why burning?

[Blaskowicz]

I did that a couple times. Want to use speaker cables? You can cut the cable at the desired length with a pair of scissors, then if you're lazy, burn the end of the cable with a cigarette lighter to bare it. Ditto with CAT5 pairs (the tiny inner wires - I don't suggest burning what surrounds them), there the pollution is tiny is comparison.

(Don't buy thick high end speaker cables, they're useless and a rip off.. and they're harder to rip off?)

Re:Why burning?

[Blaskowicz]

I forgot the adequate warning that this is Not Nice.

Re:Why burning?

[retroworks]

Bored unemployed teenagers. See photos.

Re:Why burning?

[wjcofkc]

When you burn it, everything you don't want goes up in smoke leaving behind everything you do want. In the United States, copper theft is very high. This almost always means burning what you stole to get at the copper - otherwise no one will buy it. I live not 10-minutes away from a scrapyard that buys the most obviously stolen copper. If you bring in 80 pounds of heavy-duty copper wiring with the plastic still on it, they won't purchase it because they can't accurately weigh it. Also, they can't legally burn it and aren't going to go through the trouble of stripping it. So it gets burned, weighed, and sold in its raw form.

Funny thing about that. Google fiber is being installed not far from where I live. As a consequence, there have been incidents where a whole lot of fiber gets left out overnight. The next day its been magically relocated to a ditch somewhere - charred, burned, and melted. No one ever said that copper thieves are all that bright.

That's the best you can do?

[drinkypoo]

The fact that responsible recycling is occurring doesn't change the fact that irresponsible e-Waste burning is occurring any more than the fact that America is full of obese people changes the fact that there are literally children starving in America.

Re:Something I threw away may have killed someone

[drinkypoo]

You aren't acting like a savage - the people who dispose of it for a living or enrichment, without a care to what they've stuck in some bog, river or former farmland, those are savages.

Who is responsible for the consequences when you hand a toddler a loaded gun?

Who is responsible for the consequences when you knowingly arm a criminal who has additional criminal intent?

Re:Choice

[nurb432]

Again, its a choice. Choose poorly, die. Choose well, dont die.

To answer your question: If i was in that situation, i would choose to prey on others that were choosing poorly.

Re:What's the point of this?

[rhodie]

It could inspire us to support companies that actually do recycling rather than dumping.

You don't get it... This is the recycling you speak of! My town used to have a couple days a year you could drop off electronics and they would "recycle" them by giving the gear to companies where it would be sent to less developed nations where "outdated technology could still be used". They just don't tell you that when they were done with it (or if they had no use for it) that this this is how it would be used...

It could even just be simply to inform you that people are suffering because of greed. News does not always need you to take action. Sometimes its purpose is just to inform.

Yup, these people are greedy, they would rather burn this stuff, risking personal injury, to extract what little value is left from this "junk" than starve to death... Those greedy bastards!

I do at least agree with your last point, that not every news story requires action as a response, because there is no easy or quick answer on how to deal with this problem... But knowing about it will hopefully help us make better decisions in the future. Still though, planned obsolescence and disposable everything will probably continue to be "the norm".

Re:Something I threw away may have killed someone

[Applehu Akbar]

E-waste recycling should be an automated, domestic factory operation. This would extract far more usable value than kids running around on a dump.

Re:Something I threw away may have killed someone

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if I agree that stemming the flow of e-waste denies them affordable tech... Something tells me that getting old CRTs there isn't all that more cost effective. Nor is getting them ancient cell phones.
If this were the case (and maybe it is for all I know) - where's the stories of African PC magicians resurrecting these Pentium 200 MMX machines on Win98?

Solution: build a recycling plant

[captainpanic]

Seriously, if a bunch of people can make a living by being horribly inefficient, then surely some smart engineers can extract the valuables from this by building a good process?

I mean, even if you improve organization a little, and you build a furnace with a rudimentary smoke filter, this situation would be immensely improved for everyone. Those people make a better living, and the smoke coming off it wouldn't be half as bad... (Although, if someone would actually build that, it would be reported as 'Western company builds world's dirtiest recycling plant in Ghana').

All of the west's needs to remain in the west.

[WindBourne]

First off, it is not right to pollute all over. We are killing all sorts of ppl, and wildlife.
BUT, just as big of a reason is that there are a large number of elements in these. These can be burned safely with the waste heat used for thermal electricity, and then the elements are saved off by. Heck, we paid for them once, and with recycling here, we can make use of these.
Regardless, it is time to pass a law barring any shipping off of e-waste to other undeveloped nations.

eWaste documentary - Agbogbloshie

[sugarpony]

To add to the imagery and stories we see in the posts above, a friend of mine recently went to Agbogbloshie to film a documentary about damage being done, to connect with the people who's live are impacted by this environmental atrocity. A trailer for the documentary has been cut and is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_610iyt_HA

It is a good thing that here on slashdot, its relevance is being shown to the perfect audience. We need/must to do something about this.
The question I have, is, how do we band together to help bring this to the attention of the masses and stop this type of dumping across the globe ?

Re:eWaste documentary - Agbogbloshie

[sugarpony]

I get your reference anonymouscoward, yvan eht nioj :)

If you could remember the name of the documentary and share it with us, that would be great. The fact that *the* solution to this rather complex issue is already out there, it would help to stimulate the conversation further. ...and wouldn't soil the good name of Star Blitzzz promotions.

It must be returned to whomever profited from it

[jtoj]

Must be returned and recycled exactly where it came from.
Ghana does not make/assemble/profit from eletronics industry.
Return it to whomever profited the most from it.

Re:What's the point of this?

[Khashishi]

The first step to solving a problem, is to know that one exists.

Re:What's the point of this?

[dogbowl]

Harsh as the OP is, I believe thats more of a reaction to a completely fabricated story here. If there truly is a such a problem, then why would there be a need to invent scare statistics?

Free Geek looks to be a pretty impressive operation though. I wonder if something like that would be successful on the east coast.

Re:What's the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to run that just to see (and copy and paste here the error message, 'god not found'), but then Ubuntu said that god was not installed. Now I think that I should consider agnosticism.