One of the world's largest electronic waste dumps is located in Accra, Ghana. This landfill's unique feature is that it is composed mostly of waste originating from the global north—the hyper-technological and hyper-consumerist West. This landfill, called Agbogbloshie , accumulates approximately 215000 tons of old devices annually, including computers, cell phones, cars, and refrigerators, exported from industrialized countries like America and Europe. It covers 11 hectares of land, extending near the Old Fadama slum.

This shantytown emerged and expanded dramatically following the migrations of the last century caused by Ghana's endemic political conflicts, and has resisted several demolition attempts by city authorities. Over time, the slum has become a haven for drug dealers, prostitutes, illegal weapons vendors, and a large portion of the country's underground economy and criminals, which is why it is also known as "Sodom and Gomorrah." Furthermore, over time, this settlement has come to house more than 40.000 people, often refugees seeking better living conditions.

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Our open-air landfill

This landfill exists because the hyper-consumerist Western world is improperly disposing of electronic waste, such as tablets, toys, cameras, and various electronic devices, which we discard due to planned obsolescence or because we are influenced by marketing strategies that make consumers perceive a device as obsolete as soon as the latest model is released, dooming them to become part of the mass of hazardous waste that illegally reaches poorer countries, like Africa.

It's estimated that the shelf life of a smartphone today is less than two years, but governments in the European Union, the United States, and Japan have identified that several hundred million are thrown away each year. In the United States, 12 million cell phones were collected for recycling in 2011, even though 120 million were purchased.

Agbogbloshie: The Toxicity of Electronic Waste

Electronic devices contain valuable materials such as copper, gold, dental metal, beryllium, zinc, and lithium batteries, yet less than 10% of cell phones are reused or dismantled. One reason is that these technological devices are made up of components that are becoming increasingly smaller and more difficult to recycle.

 But not only that, electronic devices also contain toxic substances such as lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic. An old computer screen, for example, can contain up to 3 kg of lead.

Once these toxic substances reach the Agbogbloshie landfill in Ghana, they disperse into the soil and become an integral part of the local ecosystem, poisoning land, animals, water, and, consequently, people. Obviously, the residents of Old Fadama lack the tools to properly manage the disposal of such a large amount of toxic waste, and those who work in this waste dump in completely primitive conditions are most at risk of becoming ill.

The synergy between Old Fadama and the Agbogbloshie landfill

Slums, which have become an integral part of the urban landscape, continue to grow haphazardly in Africa due to rural-urban migration, poverty, lack of secure tenure, and a lack of housing. To survive, people are forced to adapt their inherent talents and abilities to their needs, but also to the social and material environment in which they live.

This is why a synergy has developed between the Agbogbloshie landfill and the Old Fadama slum: to survive, the area's residents have developed their own electronic waste processing businesses, recovering copper wire and other metals, creating veritable home-based businesses. In this regard, in a study on electronic waste recycling, Grant and Oteng-Ababio (2012) observed how it is often inevitable that the informal economy interfaces with various industries, businesses, and agents of the formal economy, present on both a local and international scale.

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Strong ties are formed between the major players in the e-waste market and the informal African micro-enterprises born from the efforts of slum dwellers to survive. These ties, over time, become structured and indispensable for the area's workers. Men, but also women and children, legally or illegally, recover landfill metals, such as small quantities of gold, copper, aluminum, or even plastic (the so-called burner boys), in exchange for very low wages, such as $0,35 a day.

Agbogbloshie and… eggs

Illegal waste disposal, however, isn't the only synergistic link that has developed between the landfill and the slum's residents. Studies have shown that some of the most dangerous chemicals on earth are entering Ghana's food chain due to the landfill. For example, chicken eggs from the Old Fadama area contain dangerous levels of dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), among other harmful substances.

The research teams behind this study, Basel Action Network and Ipen, analyzed eggs laid by chickens free-roaming the streets of Old Fadama, revealing that if an adult were to eat just one of the eggs from chickens living near the landfill, they would exceed the European Food Safety Authority's limits for chlorinated dioxins by a factor of 220.

But how does our waste reach Africa illegally, despite the controls?

As early as 2013, as many as forty companies were investigated for illegal e-waste disposal: nearly one in three containers leaving the EU inspected by Interpol agents contained illegal e-waste.

The reason the underground economy surrounding waste disposal is often profitable is because in Europe it's legal to export waste to poorer countries, but only if it can be reused. Thus, much waste is sent to Asia and Africa labeled "used goods," even though it no longer functions and must therefore be disposed of. The main reason they're sent to the black market disguised as used goods is to avoid the excessive costs associated with legitimate recycling.

Agbogbloshie: Reflecting on Modern Hyper-Consumerism

The European Environment Agency also states that countries in the Global North don't fully understand (or don't want to understand) the extent of the problem because they can't track all the e-waste consumed by the West. It's estimated that between 250.000 and 1,3 million tons of used electronics are shipped out of the European Union each year, destined for Africa and Asia, where they are disposed of in dangerous and illegal conditions.

A study published by the United Nations also estimates that 50 million units of electronic waste are thrown away every year, of which only 20% are properly recycled, a figure that is expected to double by 2050.

Agbogbloshie: the subjugation of the slum dwellers

Faced with such a dramatic situation, many activists around the world are obviously calling for stricter enforcement of existing laws regarding the disposal of toxic electronic waste. In Ghana, the contamination of people by poorly managed chemicals is a daily occurrence, and this has repercussions not only on the environment and the physical health of individuals, but also on the social level. These processes, in fact, only serve to create dynamics of subjugation for poor individuals who flock to the Old Fadama slum hoping for a better life, but instead face the risk of contracting serious illnesses or, worse still, death.

As Doctors Without Borders states, "The high temperatures here preclude the use of masks to protect against the toxic and carcinogenic fumes from burning waste; even a small wound can become infected and allow bacteria and viruses to enter. Headaches, chronic nausea, ulcers, tumors... These are just some of the problems caused by direct contact with chemical and toxic substances in the soil and air, such as brominated and chlorinated dioxins. Women and children are particularly vulnerable: expectant mothers are subject to miscarriages, and babies to malformations and premature death."

Changing our consumption paradigms

 The hyper-consumerism of today's technologically advanced world is doubly toxic: physically, environmentally, and health-wise for the world's poorest countries, as it has been causing pollution, degradation, deaths from poisoning, and illnesses from intoxication for decades now. But on the other hand, socially, it is also toxic for us Westerners, because it induces an addiction to consumption, making us increasingly prone to compulsive and obsessive purchases of superfluous material goods.

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For this reason, changing our paradigms, not only in terms of waste disposal but also in our consumption habits, is something we should reflect on. Next time we decide to upgrade our smartphone because the newer model takes better photos or has more advanced features, we risk becoming part of a system that generates money in the West but fuels the subjugation of people who are victims of structural violence in a part of the world far from our gaze, but which we can no longer afford to ignore.

Mayla Bottaro

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