JohnAnnotation7

[]

UN Concerned About West Africa’s E-Waste Problem West Africa’s mounting electronic waste, or e-waste, is presenting both opportunities and problems. The **United Nations Environment Program** is proposing better regulation to protect both human health and what is a burgeoning, valuable economy in recycled electronics.  For years, Africa has been the recipient of near end-of-life electronic equipment imported onto the continent for refurbishment, recycling and further use - as well as illegal dumping. "Thirty percent of those second-hand imports were non-functioning. They should have been classified as waste," he added. "But this is evidence that the import regime is not robust enough to capture this illegal transiting or trans-boundary movement of what is a hazardous product.” explained Michael Stanley-Jones, a U.N. public information officer for environmental issues.  The United Nations Development Program studied five countries in the West African region - Benin, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria. It found that between 650,000 and one million tons of domestic e-waste are now being generated each year  “You have the huge health problems and the environmental problems by e-waste not being treated and managed in a proper way - disposed of in communal dump sites," Peiry said. "And you have people, especially children, collecting them and dismantling them, and trying to extract materials in informal operations, backyard burning - which creates problems for the environment and human health. There are precious metals contained in them, so for examples as gold or copper and rare earth metals and those can be recycled and recovered. So there are two sides -- on the one hand the metals contained in them are very dangerous, on the other, some are very valuable.”