Approach to solving the e-waste problem – case study ghana

Abstract

The market for electrical devices still continues to increase all over the world and as a consequence the quantity of waste in the category of electronics rises. A huge proportion of the electronic waste is exported from the industrial countries to developing countries, in order to save costs, and also because of too few recycling plants in industrial countries. The significant environmental and social problem in this context is that the electronic devices are mostly recycled in informal plants. Thereby the burden for the people as well as the environment increases because e-waste includes a lot of toxic substances. The negative impacts are already obvious in countries of importation. This paper will illustrate this on the basis of the case study in Ghana in Africa. The problem is evident, and research, business as well as governments aim to counter this development. The paper will investigate the current approaches employed for solving the e-waste problem with respect to legal options and also regarding voluntary agreements and the provision of information about the actual situation to the consumers.

Suggestion of E-waste Management Process for Ghana (EWMP-G) for Eco-friendly E-waste Life Cycle Assessment: A Study on Agbogbloshie, Ghana

“…Moreover, Ghana's e-waste problem poses serious health risks for the people working in the e-waste processing site. The number of informal and untrained workers in Agbogbloshie is between 4500 and 6000, and more than 90% of them come from poor regions, such as Northern Ghana, Nigeria, and Liberia (Brigden, 2005;Höltl et al, 2017;Oteng-Ababio et al, 2020). They work 10-12 hours/day to maintain their livelihood, with their monthly wages being USD 70-140 (Höltl et al, 2017), which is higher than the average income in Ghana; however, they work in poor working conditions that pose serious health risks.…”

“…The installation and operation costs were calculated by adopting the cost of our selected RDF and stoker incinerator model. We calculated the workers' income based on the available relevant literature (Höltl et al, 2017;Oteng-Ababio et al, 2020;Prakash et al, 2010).…”

“…At present, there are 4500-6000 informal workers that work in Agbogbloshie, Ghana; their monthly wages are USD 380-460 (Höltl et al, 2017;Oteng-Ababio et al, 2020;Prakash et al, 2010). Notably, among all the workers, an average of 5500 make USD 420 per month; considering the GDP, this amount is higher than the average monthly wage in the country.…”

‘Informal Exceptionalism?’ Labour Migrants’ Creative Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Livelihoods in Accra, Ghana

“…From the findings, the respondents were cognisant of this ‘injustice’, but their low education level and the allure of a starting wage that is upwards of five to seven times that of the monthly wages of a Ghanaian minimum wage employee is often too attractive to resist. Their work exceptionalism in regard to their contribution to the urban economy manifests itself to date in the public sector evidence of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), with a collection rate that is only around 1% (Höeltl et al, 2017), whereas the ‘informal scavengers’ operate at 95% (Grant and Oteng-Ababio, 2016). We observed that e-waste enterprise has expanded beyond Agbogbloshie to secondary sites in Accra, Kumasi, Koforidua and Takoradi, with over 400–600 ‘firms’ operating in Accra; subsets of these firms maintain links to larger formal firms, whereas the informal recyclers rely on the intermediators (see Figure 2).…”