Computer recycling West Africa style - Click - BBC News

[Music] recycling West Africa style consumer electronics smashed sorted and the valuable Metals extracted this is agbo blosi Acra where technology goes to die workers here are smelting feeding fires with TV casings and fridge Interiors a heat Fierce enough to burn the insulation of electrical C s so what are you looking for when you're doing this when I'm doing this I'm looking for copper a fingertip search through the ashes glean scraps of metal that are then sold on take-home pay between five and seven e the men and boys working here and they range between 13 and

35 years old they're not from a they come from the north of the country and they came here on a sort of Gold Rush promised riches from waste but the riches turned out to be a pittance and the gold turned out to be lead cadmium and other heavy metals lodged in their bodies and slowly poisoning them we have problems because if you didn't bath or maybe if you bath finish it will just be paining your body unless you get some unless you get some medicine Hanan is just 17 years old taking medicine to work in

an environment so toxic that even some of the boys here refuse to touch the river running through the site and you could see the smoke also the smokes is also traveling at any place that it deposit this heavy metals or this the pur there can be contaminated the the soil itself the soil itself you could see is hugely contaminated just by your sight time to leave agbo blosi and head with Vincent to Ghana's atomic energy commission the lab has performed a battery of tests on soil from the site they found cadmium 30 times over acceptable

levels it can cause cancer kidney failure bone disease levels of lead which attacks the n nervous system topped 100 times the recommended maximum dose you wouldn't live here I would not advise anybody to live there meanwhile this place has been classified as one of the most pollutant or contaminated sites in the world the processing at agal blosi is fed by the illegal traffic of ewaste into Ghana today used TVs from Australia and Spain are being loaded onto waiting trucks there's nothing wrong with importing used Tech if it works if it doesn't it's hazardous E-Waste and

it shouldn't be here so how many of these TVs actually work and they all work they function 100% about 99 99% how big is 1% biggest very Garner is working on leg ation to prevent legal E-Waste Imports but it's taking time as legislators don't want to curb the legitimate trade in used Tech we do have some of the equipment that functions when it is imported into the country so what um the drafters are seeking to do is to ensure that they don't uh end up preventing the vulnerable trade in use uh electric and electronic equipment

in the meantime Young and boys will continue to stoke the fires at agba blosi and pay a heavy price with their health for a handful of change