Sodom and Gomorrah as E-Wasteland

Accra, Ghana — Iddrisssu Inusah sits on the scavenged husk of a PC monitor, his rangy legs rooted in the blackened soil of Agbogbloshie, the largest and most controversial slum in Ghana’s heady, seaside capital.

Just in front of him is a bundle of wires engulfed in flames, the fire a livid chaos of green, blue, orange and red. A thunderhead of black smoke rolls out over the tiny, toxic expanse of Korle Lagoon and across to the tin-roofed shacks that scrap-workers like Inusah call home.

“We are burning wires to get copper to sell and get money,” says the 19-year-old from northern Ghana. “We don’t have a specific amount we sell it for, but we take whatever the buyers give us. If it weighs more than 100 kilos, then we will get like GH $5 (about US$3.35).”

Similar fires are blazing all around this corner of Agbogbloshie, an illegal settlement also referred to as Sodom and Gomorrah, or Old Fadama. The landscape is burnt and rusted, black and brown, scattered with mounds of human feces, shattered casings from home and office electronics, and miscellaneous debris. This is one of the faraway faces of the western world’s electronics renewal fetish.

Few developing countries have adequate recycling or landfill infrastructure, and improper disposal creates intense pollution. Environmental scientists say dioxins, fire retardants, heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, and other chemicals are toxic enough to alter human DNA.

While e-waste exporting has been an issue since the 1980s, it’s become more and more of a crisis in recent years. Western markets are awash in annually updated consumer gadgets—new TVs, cell phones, gaming systems, home appliances—and middle class societies with similar tastes are emerging in nations like India and China.

According to Pike Research, a clean technology market researcher and consultant, the global volume of e-waste will reach 73 million metric tons by 2015, after which a number of initiatives could claw back output.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency says Americans generate a few million tons of e-waste every year, and most of it ends up in landfill. What is recycled is often exported to developing countries, where it may find temporary life in a school or office before its inevitable terminus in the hands of a scrapper.

The United States Executive Office of the President Council on Environmental Quality recently announced a strategy do curtail e-waste. One of the four deliverables is to strengthen America’s role in the international stewardship arena.

The U.S. comes under perennial fire from responsible disposal advocates because it hasn’t signed the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, an international agreement restricting exports. Earlier this summer, two congressmen rolled out the Responsible Electronics Recycling Act, which they say will bring the country in step with Basel signatories.

In Europe, where nations are signatories of both the Basel Convention and a subsequent amendment banning e-waste exports to developing countries, weak enforcement allows the practice to continue, with ports in Asia and Africa as recipients. Goods can be labeled as re-use or donation, and containers are lost in the mix at huge export docks in places like Rotterdam.

Canada is also a Basel signatory, and the agreement’s principles have been downloaded into the domestic regulatory structure. Still, e-waste watchdog Basel Action Network warned last year that slack enforcement makes Canada an ongoing part of the problem.

But there are enforcement victories. Earlier this year, two Canadian companies were found guilty of illegal exporting to Asia. Jieyang Sigma Metal Plastic Inc. was fined $30,000 after pleading guilty to an investigation launched by Environment Canada and Transport Canada. N.W. Cole Associate Appraisers Limited pled guilty to similar charges and was fined $10,000.

The government of Ghana has been creeping toward the passage of its own legislation restricting imports and regulating disposal. In recent media reports, the minister of Environment, Science and Technology said legislation to that effect is nearing conclusion. But, then, that’s something of an old song.

Ghana has already embarked on a number of international and domestic legal endeavours aimed at detoxifying workplaces, encouraging sustainable development, and tackling the albatross of e-waste. But advocates say those laws are ineffective.

“There are no clear and specific national regulations that define, restrict or prohibit hazardous e-waste recycling and set-up,” says this year’s Ghana E-Waste Country Assessment, written by SBC E-Waste Africa Project, an organization implemented under the framework of Basel, of which Ghana is a signatory.

Further complicating the picture is the potential social fall-out of any law that actually is enforced. The employment picture in northern Ghana is dire, and scores of young people make their way south, to mega Accra, in the hopes of earning money to further education or take care of family. Typically, these migrants arrive to a smoggy environment bereft of opportunity and thick with poverty.

“I know the fire is not good for our health,” says Mohamed Suiad, who is unsure of his age, but imagines himself to be about 20 years old. “But because of the money we get, we continue to stay here. We don’t like it, but we are working like that.”

Like Inusah, Suiad makes just GH $5 a day, and most of that he sends home to his parents up north. He spends his days on the banks of the lagoon, hanging out under the cab of a truck and waiting for his ‘master’ to bring in wire-tangles for him to burn.

Michael Bush is higher up the scrapper ladder. Unlike Inusah and Suiad, who are benighted with soot and filth and seem almost to seep out of the landscape, Bush wears a bright shirt and clean jeans. Closer to the edge of the land, working under a roof of corrugated tin, Bush examines a few boxes of motherboards and computer chips.

“In scrap business all over the world, you can suffer to sort out the valuable metals you want, and after the shipment you will get about 20 per cent or 40 per cent,” he says.

He finds his material all over Ghana—schools, offices, homes—and dismantles the casings before shipping the valuable parts to Germany and the United States.

“When it gets there, they melt everything, and a machine will separate them and take the valuable metals it needs from the liquid.”

It’s not yet known how deeply the economies of Bush, Inusah, or Suiad will be impacted by new regulations, whether in national, international or foreign law. But because they currently operate in an almost perfect absence of regulation, it’s likely their earnings will fall.

Self-help Initiative Support Services (SISS), a Ghanaian skills training NGO funded by Comic Relief from the UK, is attempting to address this issue through its Urban Lifeline Project.

“Both past and present governments have shown little interest in improving social conditions in the slum,” said Program Manager Yaw Asante at a recent conference exploring the employment picture of Agbogbloshie.

Shirazu Yussif, 28, was a participant in last year’s SISS training modules. Dressed in a crisp, white shirt and holding a set of car keys and a cell phone, he cuts a marked contrast to the likes of Inusah and Suiad, even though he counted himself in their ranks until his involvement with SISS.

His scrapping days behind him, he now works with computers, has a shop near the slum, and gives training lectures with SISS assistance.

“As soon as I finished my computer classes, I said, ‘What can I do?’ I cannot put it down. I have to achieve something.

“(SISS) brought me two computers, and I put them inside the shop and started lecturing people there.”

Even still, Inusah and Suiad have never heard of either Yussif or SISS. And they are skeptical and suspicious when outsiders come into their community and tell them about these kinds of opportunities.

“No one has come here with that offer,” says Suiad. “Even if they come, they don’t tell us the truth. It’s been three years now that some people came to tell us that they will open a company here but they did not return.”

The government, meanwhile, has pledged to assist with skills development. Speaking at the same conference as Asante, Ibrahim Murtala, deputy national coordinator with the National Youth Employment Program (NYEP), invited SISS to submit a proposal.

“The NYEP is more than willing to assist once you submit a proposal and that proposal is convincing,” he said to general applause. “And I don’t think with the work you are doing that we can’t work together.”

He outlined a battery of programming he said has touched thousands of young people. Some are given paid internships in government offices, an opportunity that gives them an advantage in a national job market that demands work experience for gainful employment. He said others have found work with the police services, while those with more significant educational challenges have been placed with road maintenance crews.

Meanwhile, Ghanaian family structures put an additional strain on the situation. Many young people who come to Accra for work are here at the behest of their families. It’s what Asante referred to as a ‘mandate.’ When SISS approaches them with training opportunities, they are often unable to make a decision.

“When we approach people, they say they came to Accra to make money,” he said. “Therefore, they have to go back home to the north or from wherever they are from and get a new mandate.

“It’s very sad.”

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Paul Carlucci is a freelance writer living in Accra. His work has been published with Al Jazeera English, Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, Vancouver Review and others. He was a finalist in the Gold Medal category for this year’s Western Magazine Awards.

Jamila Akweley Okertchiri is a feature writer and reporter with the Daily Guide in Accra, Ghana.

Origin
Source: Toronto Standard