Ghana’s e-waste crisis shows global environmental cost of our digital addiction

In the bustling streets of Accra, Ghana, Isaac Dinwe witnesses firsthand one of the world’s most pressing environmental crises. Working for Closing the Loop, a Dutch NGO focused on electronics recycling, Dinwe sees how his country has become overwhelmed by electronic waste from around the globe. “The e-waste problem in my country is so huge we are unable to manage it,” he explains. “Most of our e-waste ends up in city centres. Informal workers extract what they can sell and burn the rest. It causes a lot of pollution.”

Dinwe leads a 16-person team that travels throughout Accra—visiting repair shops, villages, and churches—to purchase “dead” mobile phones before they end up in landfills or burn piles. Their careful approach involves paying modest amounts to ensure phones are used until the absolute end of their lifecycle. Despite these grassroots efforts, massive quantities of e-waste still flow into Ghana’s waste dumps, where scavengers salvage valuable components before burning the remainder, releasing toxic pollutants that threaten public health.

This crisis reflects a global problem: our digital consumption habits are creating environmental disasters in developing nations that lack proper e-waste infrastructure and legislation. While organizations like Closing the Loop partner with phone manufacturers in Germany and the Netherlands to address the issue, the scale of electronic waste continues to grow exponentially, making Ghana’s struggle a urgent warning about the true cost of our increasingly connected world.