End the Dumping of E-Waste Into the Developing World

Reader Contribution by Allen Hershkowitz and Ph.D.
article image

The New York Times Magazine published a photo essay titled A Global Graveyard for Dead Computers in Ghana this week, which documents the dumping and hazardous management of electronic waste in Ghana. This practice is not limited to Ghana and infects many other developing countries including China, India and Pakistan.

As NRDC’s representative to the United Nations Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste in the late 1980s, a treaty that was intended to end the dumping of hazardous wastes by industrialized countries into the developing world, I have watched with disappointment for almost two decades as the United States stands virtually alone in the world in not ratifying that treaty. The dumping of electronic waste, which was a very small fraction of our concern when we negotiated the Basel treaty, is now a huge hazardous waste problem in the developing world, contaminating water supplies and land with toxic heavy metals, dioxins, PCBs and acids, and putting some of the world’s poorest populations at great risk.

Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368