High-tech hell

Shirtless boys rapidly pull the computer apart, discarding bits and pieces, until they expose the wires, yank them out, and toss them into a fire. Acrid, toxic smoke blooms as the boys prod the wires and the fire strips the plastic around the wires, leaving the sought-after copper. Welcome, to Agbogbloshie, where your technology goes to die.

A new film e-wasteland captures the horrors of the world’s largest e-waste slum through surreal and staggering images. Shot over three weeks by one-man guerrilla filmmaker, David Fedele, e-wasteland is an entirely visual experience without dialogue or voice-over.

“I wanted to visually present a particular environment, attempt to show it as truthfully as possible, and give people the responsibility to think about the issues themselves,” Fedele told mongabay.com in an interview. “I believe that images can be far more powerful than words, and can have a much bigger impact and remain in your memory longer.”

A slum of Ghana’s capital city, Accra, Agbogbloshie is home to some 40,000 people, mostly migrants from rural areas, and many eke out a living by breaking down and burning e-waste for raw materials that can be re-sold. The slum is a byproduct of what Fedele calls the western world’s “obscene obsession […] with consuming, discarding, then consuming again.”

“I attempted to show that these expensive ’things’ that we acquire, once they get old or broken, are nothing more than bits of plastic, metal, chemicals and other waste,” he explains. “That’s what struck me the more time I spent at Agbogbloshie. I saw a photocopier, but all they saw was copper, metal, computer boards … and a whole lot of plastic in the way stopping them from reaching these things! And it is ALL for money. The photocopier ONLY has value because its PARTS are valuable to someone. But as a photocopier, it is totally worthless.”

Sorting e-waste. Photo by: David Fedele.

Once the waste is broken down, Fedele says raw materials are often exported back to the industrial world, “leaving behind illness and sickness, pollution, and environmental destruction [in Agbogbloshie].”

E-waste includes many toxic materials such as lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury. With no health or environmental protections in the slum, the toxins contaminate the air, water, and the food consumed in the slum.

“Filming was extremely difficult, as the conditions are appalling. The area is constantly covered in thick, toxic smoke from the burning of electrical cables that goes on all day and night,” Fedele says, noting that “Apart from the conditions, I was constantly challenged ethically and morally about the concept of filming in a slum and a dumpsite. Understandably, most people didn’t want me to film them, as they were ashamed of the work that they did, and the conditions they live in.” Everyone he spoke to told Fedele that the slum was ‘not suitable for human habitation.’ Locals have even dubbed the slum Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities that are destroyed by fire and sulfur in the Bible.

Still Fedele was adopted by a local troupe of e-waste boys.

“We would sit together, eat together and drink together. It is an extraordinary thing—these boys, who have virtually nothing, would invite me to share their food at every meal,” he says.

Fedele is by no means a luddite: “electronics are an important, necessary and growing part of today’s society, which we are all part of, including me. I sit here writing this on an Apple Mac, having shot a film with a digital video camera, and asking people to watch my film online.” However, he stresses that we must address the horrifying conditions in Agbogbloshie and that tech companies should take on a more active role in dealing with the problem.

“I believe that companies should be forced to take much more responsibility for their products once they reach the end of their lifetime, and make it easier for consumers to recycle their products locally. If a company is happy to ‘introduce’ a product into the world, they must be forced to take responsibility for this product, including its safe and environmentally sound disposal,” he says.

Fedele filming in Agbogbloshie. Photo by: David Fedele.

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