A quick glimpse of Agbogbloshie, Ghana's notorious e-waste graveyard, and one of the most toxic environments in the world

By Muntaka Chasant | 627 words | Reading time: 2 min

Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana by Muntaka Chasant

Agbogbloshie e-waste dump, Accra, Ghana/ November 2018 Photo Credit: Muntaka Chasant

Agbogbloshie, Ghana

Several studies, including the works of Richard Grant (1) (2), and Jack Caravanos (3), have closely examined the informal "urban mining" of copper and other rare earth metals from waste electrical and electronic equipments (WEEE) at the Agbogbloshie e-waste dump, and their environmental and health implications for scrap workers and the city's population.

Agbogbloshie is located near the center of Accra, Ghana’s capital city.

What goes on inside the Agbogbloshie scrapyard from morning till night?

As earth's native metals deplete, futurists are starting to point to "urban mining" as the ultimate frontier in minerals exploitation.

But while mechanical processes such as pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, and biometallurgy are often used to recover precious and rare earth metals from e-waste in other parts of the world, young men at Agbogbloshie use crude methods (see photos & videos below) to remove plastic sheaths off copper wires, releasing a cocktail of highly toxic chemicals into the city's air.

Agbogbloshie is also Accra's largest open-air food market.

Why is Agbogbloshie Rated Among the Worst Polluted places on Earth?

Pure Earth (4) in 2013 rated Agbogbloshie among the world’s top ten most toxic environments, along with places such as Chernobyl, the 1986 nuclear accident site in Ukraine, and Dzerzhinsk, Russia’s cold war-era chemical weapons manufacturing city, often described as the most chemically polluted city in the world.

Scavengers roam through the streets of Accra by foot with handcarts, picking electrical wires and e-waste, sometimes from households, where they pay a small fee in exchange for old and unused electronics and wires.

See also: Pictures: The Rwandan Genocide

The collectors resell these wires to intermediaries, who also resell them to scrap dealers inside the Agbogbloshie scrapyard.

The wires and e-waste are then turned over to burners (as pictured below) to use 'primitive' methods to recover copper.

This has emerged as a major livelihood strategy in many developing countries, including Ghana.

The ''urban mined' copper are resold and exported into the global reprocessing system, where they are used in newer products.

Find out below why Agbogbloshie, Accra's largest open food market, is rated among the worst places on earth.

Tangled cables and wires Agbogbloshie Accra Ghana by Muntaka Chasant - ATCMASK.COM