The most polluted places in the world: landfills in Africa

MOST POLLUTED PLACES IN THE WORLD

When we think of the most polluted place in the world, we immediately think of Ukraine and Chernobyl, where, only now, nature is beginning to reclaim the land abandoned by citizens following the terrible nuclear disaster. Or our own Land of Fires in Campania, an area devastated by the presence of toxic waste and the numerous fires caused by this waste.

The Agbogbloshie e-waste landfill in Ghana

Yet this sad record holds true in Agbogbloshie, Ghana, the largest landfill for electronic waste . Cell phones and computers, refrigerators and ovens, washing machines and dishwashers from all over the world arrive here; they are processed, often with child labor and without any protection, to recover precious metals.

READ ALSO: Electronic waste: how to dispose of it correctly

DISPOSAL OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONIC WASTE

From one million cell phones , for example, 24 kilos of gold, 9 kilos of copper, and 250 kilos of silver are obtained . A veritable black market of waste, fueled by a global trafficking network, often controlled by criminal clans, which drags the objects we Westerners throw into the garbage dumps, electrical goods, into these global hells. The data comes from the EPA, the American Environmental Protection Agency: every day, every 24 hours, we improperly dispose of 140 computers and over 400 cell phones and tablets.

ELECTRICAL MATERIAL LANDFILLS AROUND THE WORLD

And many of these end up in Ghana, or in the electrical waste dumps of Old Seelampur, near Delhi, where a worker earns around 50 euros a month for this infamous profession . Or even in Lahore, Pakistan, and Guangzhou, China, where thousands of people work for 17 cents an hour to recover metals and where deaths from toxic fumes have convinced local authorities to close the incinerators.

HEALTH RISKS CAUSED BY ELECTRICAL MATERIAL LANDFILL

Yes, because electronic waste can even kill you, considering that when it's burned, in addition to releasing precious metals, it also releases dioxin, lead, cadmium, and mercury. In other words, poisons.

GUIYU WASTE LANDFILL

But it's not just Agbogbloshie: there's also a city in China, Guyu, where as many as 15 tons of electronic waste are recycled every day . Here too, workers collect and dismantle the waste in poorly ventilated workshops, without wearing protective masks and in extremely precarious safety conditions . As a result, the water and groundwater near the landfill are heavily polluted, and children have high levels of lead in their blood as well as respiratory problems.

Let's think about this, then, when we get rid of a computer or a cell phone, and let's make sure it ends up in the right place and not in one of these waste dumps .

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