Ever wondered what happened to your old televisions, radios, computer monitors and systems when you threw them away and upgraded? I’m sure some of you might have donated them to charity, others might have ‘recycled’ them with electronic companies, and then some of you just threw them in the dumpster (admit it). Well, I have news for you. They all end up in the same place regardless of how you got rid of it.
It is becoming big business to ship outmoded electrical overseas to poorer countries instead of recycling them with environmentally safe methods. Some of these countries have no idea that they are getting ‘trash.’ They are told that they are ‘donations’ only to find out that half of them don’t even work. The non-functional goods are then dumped on sites that have turned into mountains. This sort of pollution would never be entertained in America. But America is causing it elsewhere. And as these heaps of e-waste grow, the poor begin to scavenge through the rubble is search of anything valuable. Boys and women, even children have created an occupation out of searching through e-waste trash heaps for valuable copper wire and other spare parts that could be sold for money. In order to be able to extract these wires and parts, they burn the plastics coverings of the monitors and tvs to expedite the process. The fumes emitted are toxic and are a slow poisoning to these ignorant victims of the irresponsibility shown by the developed world.
The video below, presented by Frontline on PBS, gives detailed coverage of the process, first visiting the Korle Lagoon in Ghana and then tracking a container of supposedly recycled e-waste all the way to Hong Kong. The Korle Lagoon was once a wetland that helped maintain the natural balance of the environment in and around Ghana’s capital, Accra. Now it has been named one of the most polluted water bodies in the world. Even the locals call it Sodom and Gomorrah: a dumping site for the trash that the West has conveniently forgotten about.
The fight against the dumping of e-waste is a global campaign that is finally beginning to attract the attention of the necessary decision-makers of developed countries. With all the conversation around the world about climate change and environmental preservation, hazards like this are no longer able to fly under the radar. I will bring more developments on the steps that NGO’s and governments are taking to clean up the mess that has been made.
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