UK, Others Dump Toxic Waste On Nigeria

Undercover operation by Greenpeace International, an environmental organisation, has exposed an illegal dumping of electronic waste, by countries such as the United Kingdom, on Nigeria. This much, the group revealed on its website, today.

After three years of investigation, Greenpeace said it has now found that electronic waste, like the old TV that ought to have been recycled, is being disguised as second-hand goods and shipped off to Nigeria, where it is sold, scrapped or illegally dumped.

The undercover operation, carried out with the help of Sky Television, is evidence that there is a growing trade in hazardous waste from Europe to the developing world, because electronic companies’ have failed to take responsibility for recycling their products.

Acting on a tip-off, the group launched an operation to see just where some electronic waste was ending up. It took an unfixable TV, fitted it with a tracking device and brought it to the UK’s Hampshire County Council for recycling. Instead of being safely dismantled in the UK or Europe, like it should have been, the Council’s ‘recycling’ company, BJ Electronics, passed it on as ‘second-hand goods’ and it was shipped off to Nigeria to be sold or scrapped and dumped.

It’s illegal to export broken electronic goods under EU legislation - at no point, before it was crammed into a container with similar TVs and shipped off, was the TV turned on or tested to see if it was in working condition. We followed the complete e-waste trafficking route by hiding a tracking device inside the TV that provided location updates via GPS. Nigeria, like Ghana, Pakistan, India and China, is just one of many destinations that Europe, the United States, Japan, South Korea and other developed countries are using as toxic e-waste dumping grounds.

For years, Greenpeace said, it has been exposing the mountains of e-waste that show up on the doorstep of developing countries at the expense of people and the environment. The poorest people, in many cases children, are put to work, breaking apart TVs, mobile phones, game consoles and other electronic items that arrive in their tonnes.

With no safety measures, they are exposed to highly toxic chemicals, including mercury, which damages the brain; lead, which can damage reproductive systems; and cadmium, which causes kidney damage.