The United Nations estimates that up to 50 million tons of electronic waste are thrown away globally each year. It costs about €3.50 ($5.30) to properly dispose of an old CRT monitor in Germany. But it costs only €1.50 to stick it on a container ship to Ghana. Agbogbloshie near Accra, Ghana is one place. There are many places like this, not just in Ghana, but also in countries like Nigeria, Vietnam, India, China and the Philippines.
An international treaty, the Basel Convention, came into effect in 1989. The treaty is sound in its concept, forbidding developed countries from carrying out unauthorized dumping of computer waste in less developed countries. A total of 172 countries have signed the convention, but three of them never ratified it: Haiti, Afghanistan, and the United States. According to estimates by the US Environmental Protection Agency, around 40 million computers are discarded each year in the US alone.
European Union directives with acronyms like WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) and RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) followed the Basel Convention, and individual countries have signed them into law. Germany’s waste disposal laws are among the world’s strictest, and shipping computer waste to Ghana can lead to a prison sentence. In theory.
The German government recently set out to examine how things look in practice. Experts at the German Federal Environment Agency are still completing a paper that will be published in the coming weeks, but the upshot is already clear — there are serious holes in the country’s recycling system. According to the study, export firms in Germany ship 100,000 tons of discarded electrical appliances south each year, far more than experts had feared.
Greenpeace took samples of mud from junkyard then ash and soil from several different places in the area. The chemist ran tests on the samples back home in England, and the values he arrived at weren’t good. He found high concentrations of lead, cadmium and arsenic, as well as dioxins, furans and polychlorinated biphenyls.
Lead, to take just one of the dangerous chemicals, causes headaches and stomach cramps after brief exposure. In the long term, it damages the nervous system, the kidneys, the blood and especially the brain. When children ingest lead through water or breathe it in, their brains shrink slightly and their intelligence decreases. Scientists in Germany grow concerned when they find values exceeding a limit of 0.5 milligrams of lead dust per cubic meter of air. The cathode ray tubes in a single computer monitor contain about 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds) of lead. Many of the other substances the chemist found can also cause cancer, among other things.
Mike Anane, an environmental activist and local coordinator for the international human rights organization FIAN, brought in the people from Greenpeace. Anane was born here 46 years ago, right around where Agbogbloshie now lies. In those days, there was nothing along the banks but green meadows and flamingos, and fishermen made their living from the river. Now nothing can live in the water.
– from abcnews.go.com
Please try to reuse electronic products. Delay its purchase. Dont use laptops, mobile phones. They have low service life.