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Re:Agbogbloshie, the world's largest e-waste dump by ptaipale on Tuesday March 03, 2015 @07:46AM (#9137374)
Yep, government regulation and laws. The question is: which government?

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.

Re:Agbogbloshie, the world's largest e-waste dump by Infinitesimus on Tuesday March 03, 2015 @08:50AM (#9137591)
At the very least, I'd say the governments where these are coming from and the government on Ghana(and other dump sites).

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.

Re:Agbogbloshie, the world's largest e-waste dump by DanBC on Tuesday March 03, 2015 @08:04AM (#9137432)
There are existig laws to prevent e-waste dumping -- most of the e-waste from the EU in Agbogbloshie was illegally exported.

http://www.euractiv.com/sustainability/new-law-seeks-limit-d...

Re:Agbogbloshie, the world's largest e-waste dump by ptaipale on Tuesday March 03, 2015 @08:37AM (#9137547)
Yes, in addition to laws and regulations, there needs to be enforcement, otherwise they do nothing.
Re:Agbogbloshie, the world's largest e-waste dump by acomjean on Tuesday March 03, 2015 @08:06AM (#9137445)
>Each month, cargo containers arrive in Agbogbloshie, often illegally,

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.