industryterm:discarded electronics

  • Criminal Negligence ? « Discard Studies

    http://discardstudies.com/2015/06/24/criminal-negligence

    Trafic de déchets et criminalité, un rapport complet richement illustré !

    On 12 May 2015 the United Nations Environmental Program announced the release of a new report called Waste Crime – Waste Risks. Among the topics covered by the report is the global problem of discarded electronics or ‘e-waste’. After reading the report with a focus on the sections pertinent to our research interests, we feel compelled as scholars to highlight serious shortcomings of the report. For convenience, we identify three types of such shortcomings of claims made in the report:

    Those that are falsifiable on their own terms.
    Those that are founded on weak or non-existent evidence.
    Those that are built on self-referential foundations of weak evidence.

    In most instances, these three types of shortcomings operate together. Taken together they are, in our assessment, evidence of “corner-cutting techniques” (Rekdal, 2014: 1) that detach statements from their original sources and, in so doing, make those statements “look more solid and trustworthy” (Rekdal, 2014: 4) than they actually are. Statements derived from such corner-cutting are dangerous: they circulate as knowledge deemed to be trustworthy — or even more powerfully — as ‘common’ knowledge, despite their shaky foundations.

    #environnement #déchets #criminalité

  • Ghana’s poor eke out a living from toxic e-waste - Voices of Africa
    http://voicesofafrica.co.za/ghanas-poor-eke-living-toxic-e-waste

    More than five million pieces of second-hand electronics arrive in the West African nation annually, mainly from Europe, the United States and China, according to a 2012 report by Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

    Those not in working condition – about three-quarters of the shipments docking at Accra’s main port – are dumped at Agbogbloshie, the EPA says.

    Over the years, the landfill has morphed into a toxic graveyard containing tens of millions of discarded electronics, or e-waste.

    It has also become a source of income for the poorest of the poor who search for recyclable metals, like aluminium, copper and iron, that they sell to scrap dealers for a few cents.

    Environmental and health risks
    More than a quarter of Ghana’s 25-million people live under the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day, according to World Bank data.

    About 40 000 of them, including young children, live in the slum next to the dump and eke out a living from toxic e-waste.

    “I lost my job as a security guard five years ago. The only way I can feed my family is by sorting through scrap. My son stopped going to school to help me,” explains Amenume, who hails from the village of Alakple, in the country’s north-east.

    “We know we can get sick from the smoke. But if we stop working here, we won’t have anything to eat,” he adds.

    #déchets_électroniques #déchets_toxiques #décharges #bidonvilles #récupération #pauvreté