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UK’s e-waste continues to be dumped in Ghana, Nigeria despite public outcry

Page last updated at Wednesday, February 18, 2009 9:09 AM // 1 Comment
Young men dismantling computer monitors

Young men dismantling computer monitors without any protection.

E-waste from the UK is continually being dumped in Ghana, despite calls for a halt which has led to the initiation of investigations into the matter by the Environmetal Agency (EA) of the UK.

When ghanabusinessnews.com made inquiries at the EA to find out how far they have gone with investigations, the EA press office simply said the investigations were still ongoing.

The investigations were initiated in October 2008 following media reports which led to public outry that discarded computers from the National Health Service (NHS), and some universities that were collected by recycling firms were found in Ghana, at the Agbogbloshie scrap yard.

Meanwhile the Independent, a UK publication has publcished a report based on investigations it has conducted which reveals that despite ongoing investigations in the matter, toxic wastes from the UK continue to be dumped in Ghana and Nigeria.

The report says tonnes of toxic waste collected from British municipal dumps is being sent illegally to Africa in flagrant breach of the country’s obligation to ensure its rapidly growing mountain of defunct televisions, computers and gadgets are disposed of safely.

Hundreds of thousands of discarded items, which under British law must be dismantled or recycled by specialist contractors, are being packaged into cargo containers and shipped to countries such as Nigeria and Ghana, where they are stripped of their raw metals by young men and children working on poisoned waste dumps, the report said.

According to The Independent, in a joint investigation it carried out together with Sky News, and Greenpeace, they found that a television set that had been broken beyond repair was tracked to an electronics market in Lagos, Nigeria, after being left at a civic amenity site in Basingstoke run by Hampshire Country Council.

The publication remarked that under environmental protection laws of the UK, the TV set was classified as hazardous waste and should never have left the country.

The publication revealed that the television set, fitted with a satellite tracking device, was bought by a London-based dealer, one of dozens of operators buying up a significant proportion of the estimated 940,000 tonnes of domestic electronic waste, or e-waste, produced in the UK each year and sending it for export.

Investigators bought back the television after a 4,500-mile journey from Tilbury Docks in Essex to the giant Alaba electronics market in Lagos, where up to 15 shipping containers of discarded electronics from Europe and Asia arrive every day. At least a third of the contents of each container is broken beyond use and transferred to dumps where waste pickers scavenge amid a cocktail of burning heavy metals and dioxins. The television is just one example of a broader problem with the enforcement of the legislation, which permits the export of functioning equipment but prohibits broken electronic goods from being sent outside the EU to a country with a developing economy, it said.

Claire Snow, the director of the Industry Council for Equipment Recycling (ICER), told The Independent: “It is clear that the system for collecting equipment which UK householders have thrown away is not working as well as it should.

“On the pretext of re-use, equipment which is clearly not suitable for any type of re-use is effectively being dumped in developing countries.”

The report quoting Government figures, said they show that 450,000 tonnes of e-waste is currently being treated in accordance with Britain’s waste electronic and electrical equipment laws, which place a responsibility on manufacturers to meet the environmental cost. But with the average Briton throwing away four pieces of e-waste every year, approximately 500,000 tonnes is going unaccounted for. Industry research seen by The Independent estimates that at least 10,000 tonnes of waste televisions and 23,000 tonnes of computers classified as hazardous waste are being illegally exported as part of a wider e-waste market worth “tens of millions of pounds”.

Campaigners say dealers offering around £3 for a television and £1 for a computer monitor to waste sites are undercutting specialist recycling companies, creating a “grey market”.

Britain is responsible for around 15 per cent of the EU’s total e-waste, which is growing three times faster than any other municipal waste stream, the report noted.

A spokesman for Consumers International, which is campaigning for tightened e-waste controls, said: “The sight of children scavenging toxic wastelands overflowing with the West’s unwanted computers and televisions makes a mockery of international bans to prevent the dumping of e-waste. Western governments, including the UK, have shown little desire to deal with the root cause of this problem.”

Not only have Western governments shown little desire to deal with the problem, governments in Ghana, have shown no desire at all to deal with the growing problem. Indeed, government officials in Ghana have shown a lack of understanding of the problem as they continue to live in denial.

In an interview with a former Deputy Minister of Rural Development, Science and Environment, Mr. Kofi Jummah said “there is no dumping of e-waste in Ghana.” And when I asked if he was aware of the Agbogbloshie dump site, he insisted, “they don’t throw computers there, if you go to Agbogbloshie you will not find even 10 computers there.”

The Ghana Environmental Protection Agency has announced in April 2008 that it would set up a committee to draft policy to deal with the problem, but not much has happened since the announcement was made. The committee has not been set up.

It is however, not clear what the current administration of the NDC’s position on these disturbing phenomena would be.

Because in a January, a five member research team led by a member of the Flemish Parliament in Belgium, Mr. Rudi Daems came into the country to raise the red flag about 13 container loads of e-waste that have arrived at the Tema Harbour  from Europe, but no response so far has been heard from the government.

It is becoming clear that the lukewarm attitude of governments in Ghana and authorities whose responsibility it is to deal with these issues that is goading exporters and importers of e-waste on.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi

Email: edogbevi@hotmail.com



Comments

1 Comment

  1. don says:
    June 24, 2009 at 2:48 pm

    its pretty said i see the show on pbs about how people get our information and we wounder way things happen to us in the way it does our peace of mine in no longer our own personal buissiness because some one else across the world wants our buissiness and it does not belong to them also and it shows we are never protected by gov we are sold by gov our very own in our community behind enmeny lines and we dont even know it and not prepared for it when the us buys computers it scould be a brochure on the does and donts of how people get our resources we can get training on computers but not percautions of how con people can get our private lifes in their hands and take us for a ride we never see comeing the infromation needs to be put on the computers so we are aware of this type of behavior the gov has allowed it must be stop .

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