Agbog-blog-shie Unplugged: E-Waste Tsunami Covers Sodom & Gomorah in Understated Hell
Starved of facts and nuance, reports from African city of Accra - found on verge of catastrophe.
[BSNewsire, Accra, Ghana April 1 2015]
Longtime a skeptic of "ewaste" dumping claims, WR3A Founder Robin Ingenthron arrived in Ghana last Sunday, and was shocked to find the situation far graver than he imagined.
"It began when our Delta Airlines flight was unable to land," said Ingenthron. "We could see the junk televisions from 4,000 meters above Accra. They were scattered in stacks, up to 90 feet high, on the runway and tarmac, and along the highway."
The Agbogbloshie dike, which separated greater Accra from the largest collection of electronic waste on the planet, had broken. Teenagers could be seen pouring out of the Agbogbloshie fences, trying to regather the discarded computers and televisions. But as fast as the kids worked to burn them, a tsunami of CRT televisions continued to spout through the gates, covering the streets of Accra and stalling traffic.
Ingenthron and other passengers were dropped via small white parachutes, like baby Dumbos, into the zoo of e-waste. From the ground, the confessed electronics reuse kingpin came face to face with the toxic consequences of his "reuse excuse".
As reported in The Guardian, by Greenpeace, and at weather.com, "millions of tons" of obsolete electronics arrived in Agbobloshie each year. At 34 units per ton, or 102 million TVs and monitors per year, 279,452 pieces had to be burned each day, keeping the 27 scrap boys who work in Abogbloshie on double shifts. American households throwing away an average of 2.8 TVs per day are blamed for the mess. Unfortunately, faced with the relatively small fires and lack of lighter fluid, the scrap boys had allowed a tinderbox of 10 decades of throwaways to amass.
Starved of facts and nuance, reports from African city of Accra - found on verge of catastrophe.
[BSNewsire, Accra, Ghana April 1 2015]
Longtime a skeptic of "ewaste" dumping claims, WR3A Founder Robin Ingenthron arrived in Ghana last Sunday, and was shocked to find the situation far graver than he imagined.
"It began when our Delta Airlines flight was unable to land," said Ingenthron. "We could see the junk televisions from 4,000 meters above Accra. They were scattered in stacks, up to 90 feet high, on the runway and tarmac, and along the highway."
The Agbogbloshie dike, which separated greater Accra from the largest collection of electronic waste on the planet, had broken. Teenagers could be seen pouring out of the Agbogbloshie fences, trying to regather the discarded computers and televisions. But as fast as the kids worked to burn them, a tsunami of CRT televisions continued to spout through the gates, covering the streets of Accra and stalling traffic.
Ingenthron and other passengers were dropped via small white parachutes, like baby Dumbos, into the zoo of e-waste. From the ground, the confessed electronics reuse kingpin came face to face with the toxic consequences of his "reuse excuse".
As reported in The Guardian, by Greenpeace, and at weather.com, "millions of tons" of obsolete electronics arrived in Agbobloshie each year. At 34 units per ton, or 102 million TVs and monitors per year, 279,452 pieces had to be burned each day, keeping the 27 scrap boys who work in Abogbloshie on double shifts. American households throwing away an average of 2.8 TVs per day are blamed for the mess. Unfortunately, faced with the relatively small fires and lack of lighter fluid, the scrap boys had allowed a tinderbox of 10 decades of throwaways to amass.
