Monday Moaning

Electronic waste: we must design gadgets that don’t poison the planet

We discard huge amounts of electronics every year, creating a toxic wasteland – often in the poorest countries

We love our gadgets, but we need to find safe ways of disposing of them. Photograph: Oliver Stratmann/AFP/Getty Images

Record sales of tablets, laptops and smart phones. Ever smaller computers, and thinner televisions, brighter screens and sharper cameras. What could possibly be wrong with the worldwide explosion in sales of electrical and digital equipment seen this Christmas? Consumers love the sleek designs and the new connectivity they offer, businesses can’t make enough for a vast and hungry global market, and governments see technological innovation and turnover as the quick way out of recession. This is a new age of the machine and electronic equipment is indispensable in home and workplace.

But there is a downside to the revolution that governments and companies have so far ignored. In the drive to generate fast turnover and new sales, companies have deliberately made it impossible to repair their goods and have shortened the lifespan of equipment.

Hardware is designed not to keep up with software, a computer’s life is now under two years and mobile phones are upgraded every few months. Many electronic devices now have parts that cannot be removed or replaced. From being cheaper to buy new devices than to repair them, it has now reached the point where it is impossible to repair them at all.

The result is that much electronic equipment is impossible to recycle. As devices are miniaturised, they become increasingly complex. A single laptop may contain hundreds of different substances, dozens of metals, plastics and components which are expensive to dispose of. As we saw last week from Ghana, vast quantities of this dangerous “e-waste” is being dumped on developing countries where it is left to some of the poorest people to try to extract what they can in dangerous conditions.

The scale of e-waste growth is shocking and has left governments and authorities behind. By 2017 it is expected that there will be more than 10 billion mobile-connected devices alone.

From under 10m tonnes of e-waste generated in 2000, it has now reached nearly 50m tonnes, with every sign that this will increase by 33% in the next five years. Britain will discard over 1.3m tonnes of electronics this year, much of which will be buried in landfill, incinerated or exported.

The old corporate model of “take, make and chuck” is not sustainable. Our obsession with gadgetry and technology is now driving industry to open new mines around the world, squandering energy, biodiversity and water at every stage of extraction. Enormous areas of toxic wasteland are created and left for future generations to deal with.

Designing goods so they can be easily recycled is now critical. Companies must be challenged to rethink the way they make and source their materials to ensure there is no waste from start to finish. Gadgets must be reusable and repairable, and built-in obsolescence discouraged. Companies, too, must become responsible for the entire lifecycle of their products, especially when they become obsolete.

Governments must better monitor waste shipments from ports. E-waste is easy to conceal, and the black market is attracting organised crime. Natural resources have long been used to fuel violent conflict and human rights abuses, but now we must accept that gadgets can be equally dangerous. The sale of millions of computers and mobile phones, even the electronic toys that we will give this Christmas, is being driven by an increasingly flawed business model which is leading to a depleted and polluted planet.

Opinion:

No need to express an opinion here, because it’s bloody obvious!

Any company that sells any electronic gadget must be legally bound to accept that back on the purchase of a new one; and, be responsible for the responsible disposal of that gadget.

It boils down to this: If companies insist on planned obsolescence, then they are to be made responsible for the end disposal.

 

Do you ever think about…

Ghana?

Sometimes, maybe…

What about Ghana and Farmer’s Markets…

Isn’t that an oxymoron, you know like ‘military intelligence’?

Apparently not.

Well… no never!

Better think again because the idea of famer’s markets is spreading.

Ghana’s first farmers’ market: ‘We need more like this’

A fair in Accra selling local, organic sustainably grown produce is proving a hit among the growing middle class

Moco’s Savannah Honey is on sale at Accra Green Market for 10 Ghana cedis, and also exported to the UK. Photograph: Edison Gbenga Abe/Phosmic Impressions

There are some things about public gatherings in Ghana‘s capital Accra that are guaranteed. A certain amount of dust and Atlantic spray on the breeze, a sound system blaring Azonto – a local music sensation – just a bit too loud, fearless children lining up to show off their moves, and an orderly row of canopies where the hot and the tired sit down on plastic chairs and take stock.

But if you looked a little closer at the fair in Ako Adjei park on Saturday, you would have found that what appeared a typical Accra event was quietly masking something quite unusual: a farmers’ market. The dozen or so small-scale producers selling their wares at The Accra Green Market were busily making history as participants in Ghana’s first ever fair for locally grown, sustainable, organic produce. “This is a great way to give exposure to organic, local products,” says Jeffrey Mouganie, 22, founder of Moco Foods, an organic company that produces local forest honey and fiery chilli sauce, guaranteeing a traceable supply chain and hiring workers with disabilities. “The only space we usually get to market our products are at the bazaars of international schools, where we sell to a lot of expats,” he says. “But we need more markets like this – the best feedback we have had for our products is from Ghanaians.”

Displaying produce at Accra Green Market. Photograph: Edison Gbenga Abe/Phosmic Impressions

Moco’s Savannah Honey, on sale here for 10 Ghana cedis – approximately £3 – is being exported to the UK where it will go on sale at Harrods and Selfridges for what the producers expect to be around five times that price. Also on sale, organic mushroom wine – said to be a treatment for practically every medical condition from sclerosis to high blood pressure, asthma and “sexual weakness” – pak choi, gloriously frothy-leaved heads of broccoli, watermelon, small, knobbly carrots, and tough-skinned, tangy nectarines full of seeds and sweet-sour juice.

The organisers of the market believe they are part of a new trend towards sustainable, organic and local food, which they say goes hand in hand with the growth of Ghana’s new middle class. “Things in Ghana are changing – it is no longer a poor country but a middle-income country. And because of that, people are more interested in what they eat,” says Edison Gbenga Abe, 29, founder of Agripro – a mobile application company that provides farmers with access to marketplaces and which organised the Accra Green Market. “In East Africa, farmers’ markets are already really popular, but in West Africa, there is nothing like this. We plan to take it to different locations in Ghana, and we have had interest from Nigeria too.”

Constance Korkoi Tengey, founder of Immaculate Gold Beads, Mushrooms and Snails, is typical of the kind of small-scale grower whose products the market is designed to showcase. An energetic 62-year-old who carefully dishes out mushroom sandwiches, mushroom salad and mushroom gari foto – a veggie version of a popular Ghanaian dish made from cassava tubers – Tengey began growing mushrooms in her back garden seven years ago and says sales are on the rise. “I eat a lot of mushrooms as a substitute for meat, and I’ve noticed that I don’t gain as much weight, and it keeps me looking younger,” Tengey says. “People in Ghana are becoming more health-conscious these days, they are really showing an interest in my products. It’s a profitable business for me.”

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Some Countries are Trying

Ghana leaves secondhand fridges out in the cold in bid to save energy

Despite a government incentive scheme, many Ghanaians are unhappy about the introduction of a ban on used fridges

A secondhand fridges shop at City Waste in a suburb of Ghana’s capital Accra. Photograph: Afua Hirsch

Behind a once mint-coloured concrete wall – now stained by red dust – in a hilly suburb of Ghana’s capital, Accra, a large machine is making history as it chugs and whirrs away.

It is a mobile fridge degassing unit – the first of its kind on the entire African continent, its owners say – and it is sucking poisonous gases out of hundreds of Ghana’s discarded secondhand fridges. The machine was imported from Germany by City Waste Management, a company specialising in the safe disposal of electronic waste.

“We take out the poisonous gases and we separate the oils,” says Vivian Atiaybor, 41, the field co-ordinator and public relations manager for City Waste. “Since October, we have processed 450 fridges here, and there are another 600 already waiting for us to collect. Many of these fridges are so old that even within our households they are already letting off poisonous gases.”

City Waste is separating and scrapping old fridges under a rebate scheme that incentivises Ghanaians to replace them with new ones in exchange for a subsidy of 200 cedis (about £70). Others have been confiscated from the port. Secondhand fridges have been banned in Ghana since 1 January, when a new law – passed in 2008 but delayed so that importers and dealers could adjust – came into force.

Officials say there are a number of reasons for banning the devices, including the use of toxic and ozone-unfriendly chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – banned under the Montreal protocol – in fridges more than 10 years old. But the main reason was to reduce the energy burden on Ghana’s already overstretched national grid, says deputy director of the Energy Commission, Kofi Agyarko.

“Ghana has a lot of used refrigerators – we conducted a study which revealed that we had in excess of 2m, and that on average they were consuming 1,200kW hours of energy in a year,” Agyarko says. “That compares with energy-efficient refrigerators in Europe and America which consume 250kW hours in the whole year. That tells you the way we were wantonly dissipating our energy resources.”

Ghana is not the first African country to ban secondhand fridges; neighbouring Ivory Coast and nearby Nigeria have both introduced legal prohibitions on the devices in recent years. But Ghana is the first African country to use public funds to subsidise the process of replacing old fridges with new ones, having allocated 3m cedis for the scheme.

“We are leading the way on the African continent because we are not just banning the importation of used refrigerators. We have also put in place an arrangement to ensure that people who cannot afford to buy new refrigerators are cushioned,” Agyarko says.

City Waste – the sole scrapyard manager for the government rebate scheme to dispose of old fridges – earns its income by selling plastics to Ghanaian companies, which recycle them to make flip-flops and plastic containers. The company also sells metals, foam and other, more hazardous, materials extracted from the fridges to recycling plants in Europe.

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