Cris Cummins reports...
11-year old Emmanuel Osei works as a scrap
collector in Ghana, scavenging metal from the
corpses of Western computers, televisions and
other end-of-life electronic products that have
been dumped in West Africa. His goal is to
salvage the odd gram of useful metals such as
copper, which he can resell for a few cents. To
isolate those metals he and his fellow
rubbish-pickers have to burn away the useless
plastics in the insulation tubes and circuit
boards. Black clouds rise above the scrap heaps
from the fires a toxic mist that boys like
Emmanuel consttantly breathe in. Sometimes, to
make the fires more effective, rubber car tyres
are thrown on to the flames - adding some new
ingredients to the toxic cocktail.
The work on the dumps is hard and
unsophisticated. At Agbobloshie in Ghana's
capital, Accra, for example, old computer screens
are smashed to pieces up by boys using rocks. The
ground was a carpet of broken glass. The air stuck in your throat.
Campaigners warn that this is where your computer
could end up if you donât dispose of it
properly. The trade is speeding up as we in the
West continually upgrade our hardware. Hundreds
of tons of E-waste is now said to be arriving in
West Africa every month. A group from the
Austrian NGO Südwind has been in West Africa to investigate the trade.
[]
<http://fm4.orf.at/stories/1603477/>Link
--
Posted By johannes to
<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2009/05/hidden-toxic-flow-how-our-old-computers.htm>monochrom
at 5/20/2009 04:51:00 PM
