Phone upgrades, new gadgets … why e-waste must be tackled
• Technology obsoletism has been written into modern life, but we should demand new ways
Afew years ago we gasped and clutched our pearls in collective horror at images and stories emerging from Agbogbloshie in Accra, Ghana, which was declared the world’s largest e-waste dump.
In compelling stills and video, people picked over mountains of scrapped computers, radios, television exoskeletons and unidentifiable twisted metal and cabling. They breathed in thick black smoke from fires licking up mounds of plastic and rubber fittings. Children moved among the heaps, grabbing fistfuls of electronic circuits with a view to eking out a living by selling the copper, aluminium and other reclaimable metals it offers.
The pearl clutching was also inspired by the declaration that this site and many other African sites were recipients of tons of electronic waste from developed nations.
This claim has been widely disputed in the intervening years. Not that it didn’t happen to a degree, but many companies and countries have changed their ways and a significant amount of the e-waste originated from Africa itself.
A few years on and it seems we’ve forgotten the uncomfortable lessons of Agbogbloshie. To be fair, there is a lot competing for prominence in the public agenda. In the dumpster fire that is politics (and political news coverage) in 2019, it is easy to be swept up by Brexit, state capture and the brayings of the “Tangerine Tyrant”.
One of the news themes that seems to have emerged strongly is the dire need to clean up our act, literally. It is remarkable that there is still so much resistance to climate-change science. Not only is the overwhelming majority of literature and leading voices clear on this, but even if they weren’t, what is the downside to drastically reducing pollution and harmful emissions? Oh no, we created a cleaner version of our only viable home for nothing!
Technology has to face up to the role it has played in this. As much as technology is wondrous and transformative, democratising access to knowledge and publishing, it is also deeply entwined with consumerist culture and the resulting pollution and e-waste. Smartphones and the two-year upgrade cycle is the clearest example of this.
The result is the dreaded “technology drawer”. In my previous home, this quickly grew into a technology cupboard: cables, hard drives, mouses, ancient dumb phones, point-and-click digital cameras, more USB drives than I knew what to do with, chargers of every possible description.
I’m not alone: a recent survey in the UK by the Royal Society of Chemistry found 96% of consumers were hoarding these kinds of small devices. Twothirds saw themselves keeping these “indefinitely”, because they just didn’t know what to do with them. Realistically, even if they are left to moulder in a drawer for decades, they will ultimately be some landfill’s problem.
We have been conditioned to technology obsoletism: resigned to retiring aged devices in a cyclical manner, instead of advocating change in how companies make our devices.
Is there a way to make modular devices where you can upgrade components so the whole thing isn’t destined for the bin? I don’t know, but I’d love to see a start-up or two, or one of the giants with big R&D budgets, tackling this.
I won’t sit here and tell you that me recycling in my home or buying less throwaway tech will make all the difference while governments and corporates ignore or actively circumvent environmental guidelines. But these are not mutually exclusive. Consumers have power in actions and expectations.
As tech responds to ethical imperatives and consumer pressure to change its ways, we as consumers and Africans need to get on board too. The problem with the myths about places such as Agbogbloshie is that it is another way of making this “someone else’s problem”. According to Smithsonian.com, quoting from the UN environment programme, as much as 85% of that “e-waste dumped in Ghana and other parts of West Africa” was actually “produced in Ghana and West Africa”.
SA is something like the world’s 14th-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. That’s playing out of our boots for a spluttering economy. Climateactiontracker.org characterises our efforts to turn this around as “highly insufficient”.
At times it has felt as if developing nations are being asked to choose between prosperity and infrastructure, and “soft” green issues, but it’s time to re-earn our leapfrogging reputation to find solutions out of this very real need and gap.
I’d love to see SA commit to ambitious, systemic recycling programmes, develop e-waste recycling locally, comply with our better green policies, and laws be more stringently enforced. In these endeavours, tech can actually help.
Sensors and big data have exposed any number of dubious practices. In Finland, the first robotic waste-sorting plant is being tested.
And as child activist Greta Thunberg has made amply clear, the youth are rightfully fed up with our stalling: “This is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. This is not something you can like on Facebook”.
IT IS REMARKABLE THAT THERE IS STILL SO MUCH RESISTANCE TO CLIMATE-CHANGE SCIENCE
IT’S TIME TO RE-EARN OUR LEAPFROGGING REPUTATION TO FIND SOLUTIONS OUT OF THIS VERY REAL NEED AND GAP