This is Agbogbloshie dump. 1.6 km square, just ten minutes’ drive from the center of Accra, the Ghanaian capital. Every month, tons of old electrical equipment arrive here from the US and Europe.
Men, women and children pick it over searching from scrap metals that can then be resold. But at the same time, they expose themselves to the waste’s highly toxic materials like lead and phosphorous gas. Those materials have made the site, according to environmental NGO Green Cross, one of the most polluted places on Earth.

It’s just a poison graveyard of electronic waste. The ground, the soils are filled with toxic chemicals. Lead, brominated flame retardants, cadmium, dioxin, furans, all the toxic chemicals that cause a wide range of diseases and is all the result of the illegal shipment and dumping of e-waste here by the industrialized countries.

There are international laws banning the export of electronic waste but they can be sidestepped by labelling shipment “usable second hand goods”. Some are resold but the majority gets dumped here.
The fire that’s going on behind me is being burnt in order to get to the precious metals that’s contained within the plastic cabling.

Now we’ve been at the site for about an hour and those fumes are already getting into our mouth, into our eyes, into our nose and as I’ve said we’ve just been here for an hour. Imagine what that is doing to people who’ve been here day in day out for months even years.

The Ghanaian government has strongly condemned the illegal dumping of electronic waste here but as yet has offered no solution about how to clean up the problem.
Katerina Vittozzi, CCTV, in Accra, Ghana.

свернуть