Electronic Waste Management in Ghana - Issues and Practices

Man has always been proficient producer of waste; however, towards the end of the 20th century saw the upsurge of a new, noxious clutter: the electronic detritus that has come to be known as e-waste. The consumption of electronics: televisions, computers, cell phones, video games, iPods, etc has increased over the last few years, making the electronic industry the world’s largest and fastest growing enterprise [1]. The boom in the consumption of electronic products also come with a price to be paid –the management of the end-of-use products, or the e-waste. According to UN estimates, between 20 to 50 million tonnes of ewaste are generated worldwide annually, accounting for about 5% of all municipal solid waste. Not only is the figure representing the fastest growing municipal waste stream, it also has the potential of increasing further. In the case of mobile phones, for example, 98 million phones are said to be discarded in America annually [1].

[1]  Takayoshi Shinkuma,et al.  The flow of E-waste material in the Asian region and a reconsideration of international trade policies on E-waste , 2009 .

[2]  Rolf Widmer,et al.  Global perspectives on e-waste , 2005 .

[3]  Gregory Giuliani,et al.  E-waste, the hidden side of IT equipment's manufacturing and use , 2005 .

[4]  M. Oteng-Ababio The Legal and the Reasonable: Exploring the Dynamics of E-waste Disposal Strategies in Ghanaian Households , 2012 .

[5]  Surendra M. Gupta,et al.  Economics of PC recycling , 2001, SPIE Optics East.

[6]  Martin Oteng-Ababio,et al.  Perceptions of health and environmental impacts of e-waste management in Ghana , 2012, International journal of environmental health research.

[7]  Martin Oteng-Ababio,et al.  E-waste: an emerging challenge to solid waste management in Ghana , 2010 .

[8]  M. Oteng-Ababio When necessity begets ingenuity: E-waste scavenging as a livelihood strategy in accra, Ghana , 2012 .

[9]  R. Grant,et al.  Mapping the Invisible and Real "African" Economy: Urban E-Waste Circuitry , 2012 .

[10]  Sunil Kumar,et al.  E‐waste: a new challenge for waste management in India , 2004 .

[11]  C. Hageluken,et al.  Improving metal returns and eco-efficiency in electronics recycling - a holistic approach for interface optimisation between pre-processing and integrated metals smelting and refining , 2006, Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment, 2006..

[12]  L. S. Roman,et al.  E-scrap exportation: challenges and considerations , 2002, Conference Record 2002 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment (Cat. No.02CH37273).

[13]  M. Eugster,et al.  The recycling and disposal of electrical and electronic waste in China—legislative and market responses , 2005 .

[14]  Общие социальные науки Basel Action Network , 2011 .

[15]  Balakrishnan Ramesh Babu,et al.  Electrical and electronic waste: a global environmental problem. , 2007, Waste management & research : the journal of the International Solid Wastes and Public Cleansing Association, ISWA.

[16]  Manoj Kumar Tiwari,et al.  Analyzing alternatives in reverse logistics for end-of-life computers: ANP and balanced scorecard approach , 2005, Comput. Ind. Eng..