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“A Week In A Toxic Waste Dump“
A documentary film starring by Reggie Yates, produced by Harriet Morter for BBC TV.
Available in full above (with ads). Available on the BBC’s iPlayer platform without ads (with login) here. Search online for streaming options here.
“A harrowing new BBC documentary has exposed the continued illegal dumping of e-waste in developing countries. … [Presenter] Reggie [Yates], whose parents were born in Ghana, heads to the country’s capital – Accra – to spend a week living on one of the largest electronic waste dumps in the world. Nicknamed Agbogbloshie, this 20-acre site was established in the 1990s and has grown from a former wetland area with rivers, farms and a lagoon, to one of the most toxic sites on the planet. An electronic graveyard littered with fridges, computers, air conditioning units and TV monitors, the dump sits beneath a permanent plume of thick black smoke. That’s because Agbogbloshie’s ‘burner boys’ – a name given to the manual workers at the very bottom of the chain – burn the waste electronics, which are bought and dismantled in bulk by wholesalers, to salvage precious metals like copper, aluminium and lead. The men, who often work in gangs in strong competition with one another, sell the precious metals on as raw materials. They’re paid in pennies for their efforts and live in extreme poverty – rarely earning enough to move further up the chain – but they’re paying the ultimate price: with their lives” (Source: Anon 2017, np link).
Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) A Week In A Toxic Waste Dump (holding page). followthethings.com/a-week-in-a-toxic-waste-dump.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.
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