A quick glimpse of Agbogbloshie, Ghana's notorious e-waste graveyard, and one of the most toxic environments in the world
By Muntaka Chasant | 344 words | Reading time: 1.5 min
Agbogbloshie e-waste dump, Accra, Ghana/ November 2018
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 valuable metals from electronics at the Agbogbloshie e-waste dump and its environmental and health implications for e-waste workers and the city's population. Agbogbloshie is located near the center of Accra, Ghana’s capital city.
Pure Earth (4) in 2013 rated Agbogbloshie among the world’s top ten most toxic environments, along with 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, picking e-waste, sometimes from households, where they pay a small fee in exchange for old and unused electronics. This has emerged as a major livelihood strategy in many developing countries, including Ghana.
Below are some of the e-wastes, sheathed cables, etc. and how they are harvested for copper, which are resold and re-exported into the global reprocessing system.
Tangled cables and wires waiting to be harvested for copper.
Agbogbloshie scrapyard, Accra, Ghana/ November 2018
Agbogbloshie e-waste dump, Accra, Ghana/ November 2018
Agbogbloshie e-waste dump, Accra, Ghana/ December 2018
Agbogbloshie e-waste dump, Accra, Ghana/ December 2018
Agbogbloshie e-waste dump, Accra, Ghana/ December 2018
Agbogbloshie e-waste dump, Accra, Ghana/ November 2018
Agbogbloshie scrapyard Accra, Ghana/ November 2018
Agbogbloshie scrapyard, Accra, Ghana/ December 2018
Cooling down freshly harvested copper.
Agbogbloshie e-waste dump, Accra, Ghana/ November 2018
Agbogbloshie e-waste dump, Accra, Ghana/ November 2018
Freshly harvested copper.
Agbogbloshie e-waste dump, Accra, Ghana/ November 2018
Even the smallest pieces count.
Agbogbloshie e-waste dump, Accra, Ghana/ November 2018
The nearby settlement where most of the e-waste workers live with their families.
Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana/ 18 December 2018
Agbogbloshie, Ghana - A short film
"Urban mining" in Accra, Ghana - A short film
See also: Air Pollution Killing More People in Ghana
See also: "Urban mining" and Air Pollution in Accra, Ghana
See also: "A Quick Glimpse of Ghana's "Sodom and Gomorrah" Slum
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Sources
1. Grant, R. (2016). The "Urban Mine" in Accra, Ghana. RCC Perspectives, (1), 21-30. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/26241341 (Retrieved December, 2018)
2. Grant, R., & Oteng-Ababio, M. (2016). The Global Transformation of Materials and the Emergence of Informal Urban Mining in Accra, Ghana. Africa Today, 62(4), 3-20. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/africatoday.62.4.01 (Retrieved December, 2018)
3. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290519876_Exploratory_Health_Assessment_of_Chemical_Exposures_at_E-Waste_Recycling_and_Scrapyard_Facility_in_Ghana (Retrieved December, 2018)
4. http://www.worstpolluted.org/docs/TopTenThreats2013.pdf (Retrieved December, 2018)
