Normally one would expect that in the areas were this work is done, the local governments take care of environmental and work safety regulations and laws. But they don't - due to greed, corruption and whatever.
So should, for example, OECD countries forbid export of electric waste to non-OECD countries, to enforce proper disposal of hazardous materials and recycling? I don't have very clear answers to this, because there are obvious reasons both ways (do we want to exclude poor countries from the world markets?). But I think it is a good question.
One solution is an unrealistically broad rule: If your product is found in the illegal waste dump, your company will be fined an enormous amount (to both cover properly recycling the product and health care for those who manage it).
It will be the responsibility of the Ghanaian government[1] to properly document and report this and the responsibility of the home nation of the business in question to enforce it.
Building with easily recyclable materials is still a very very hard problem, unfortunately. Most of us just don't feel it because the damage done is well abstracted from us
[1] The reality is that these companies will most likely bribe government officials to exclude them from the list of offenders, given that corruption is insanely high.
http://www.euractiv.com/sustainability/new-law-seeks-limit-d...
Corruption anywhere on the chain is a huge problem. Apparently my country (US) isn't supposed to allow wasted shiped there, but it is anyway. Presumably if this waste wasn't going to be let in at the destination then nobody would try to ship it over (at expense).
Its a good and hard question:
The expense of electronic recycling and disposal is high enough that its worth shipping it to a place that doesn't have the expense. You want countries to be able to compete on waste disposal, but when the definition of disposal is "pollution" its not really a level playing field.
This isn't an easy problem.
The US has the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which for significantly toxic stuff, follows stuff from creation to disposal.
Really with pollution the incentive in capitalism is to just pollute, and not deal with waste properly. It is cheaper almost always and following regulations if they even exist usually eats into profit.
I used to work for an environmental engineering firm that had to do some site clean-ups in a previous career. Companies hate being forced to pay to clean up their messes, its one of the big incentives not to pollute, as that certainly eats into profits.
creating less waste is a good goal too (shaving weight from a phone your going to sell millions of saves a lot of resources) or as a consumer buying less means you'll throw away less (swap in an ssd for your hard drive to keep that computer another year..).
Computers and phones keep getting better and better (more energy efficient too), so there is a strong motivation to upgrade (although this is less stong then it used to be).