REPORT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS

From miles away great plumes of black acrid smoke mark the site of Sodom and Gomorrah, a sprawling dump on the outskirts of the Ghanaian capital Accra. As one edges closer to the world’s fastest-growing e-waste dumping site at Agbogbloshie, it is the smell that hits hardest. A blend of burning rubber and chemicals clogs the nostrils, stings the eyes and hangs at the back of the throat.

Such dumps, fuelled by the world’s apparently insatiable desire for lap-tops, mobile phones, computers, microwave cookers and other electronic goods, have suddenly become a major new challenge for UNEP.

The huge global growth in such products has led to the creation of new e-dumps across the developing world where impoverished young children and adults strip down obsolete goods in the search of re-usable items with which to eke out a living.

See more at :

http://www.unep.org/unea/e_waste.asp