Shocking e-waste report on European WEEE in Ghana released

A new report has been released exposing the illegal e-waste exportation route from Europe to Ghana.

The ‘What a waste’ report by makeITfair, a European-wide e-waste awareness project, found that around 600 containers of WEEE arrive in Ghana to be disposed of illegally every month. It also claims that the biggest culprits of illegal exportation are the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and Spain.

As documented in our Backyard Recycling e-book, the dangers of unregulated and unsafe WEEE disposal are manyfold to those unfortunate enough to work in the trade. ‘What a waste’ has discovered that children constitute 40% of the e-waste workforce in Agbogbloshie, Ghana.

makeITfair has joined forces with other key campaign groups, the Basel Action Network (BAN), the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and the GoodElectronics Network, to push for more rigorous e-waste exportation restrictions in the upcoming WEEE recast (WEEE 2).

makeITfair suggests that whilst stricter controls are needed from the exporting countries, investment in robust and safe recycling infrastructures are needed in developing countries, ‘The e-waste situation in Ghana calls for immediate action from the Ghanaian government. In order to eliminate the hazardous work, an alternative to the burning of wires must be introduced, and formal recycling facilities must be established. Both things must be done in collaboration with the workers in the informal sector, whose livelihood depends on the work in the waste-industry’.  In the entirety of Ghana only one formal recycling facility exists, with a team of just three workers. It is obvious that this is woefully inadequate to cope with such a large influx of WEEE.

Indeed it is important to remember that WEEE feeding into the illegal waste streams will not only be coming from developed countries but also from developing countries who are establishing their own demands for EEE.