Ghana’s waste crisis: Cleanup targets toxic waste and 20,000 jobs

At Agbogbloshie, a vast rubbish site in Ghana's capital Accra, workers and nearby residents breathe smoke from burning plastic, electronics and other waste. A government cleanup is now removing about one million tons of waste. Officials say they aim to bring informal workers into formal recycling and create up to 20,000 permanent jobs in waste management and the circular economy. So for example the recyclers may mainly be exposed to chemical toxic substances like all the heavy metals you can talk about then when you talk about the soil test they can be exposed to fecal matter they can be exposed to some aerosols and then they can also experience what's very serious among them they can also experience sharp injuries due to needles and other things in the waste. The dump is part of a global waste pipeline. Greenpeace estimates Ghana receives 15 million used garments every week, with around half of the clothing left unsold and discarded or burnt. Old electronics are also dismantled by hand, releasing toxic fumes. We conducted an investigation in 2023 and had published a report in 2024. And some of the findings are that there's a lot of textile waste that comes into Ghana. We're talking about, you know, 15 million articles of clothing coming to Ghana every week. And out of that, we realized that some of them will be transported to other markets, but most of that will remain at Kansamanto. And the traders we spoke to alluded to the fact that between 40 and 50 percent of that is usually textile waste. Workers and people living nearby report coughing and other health problems. Thank you very much. Across a huge second-hand clothing market has imports from Europe, North America and Asia, but often with a troubling by-product. My damn brand. And so they have found that opportunity to actually transfer that responsibility to the Ghanaian or the government of Ghana, which does not have the infrastructure to deal with such kind of waste. And so our plea is that the fast fashion brands should, you know, stop overconsumption and overproduction and should also stop, you know, turning Ghana into really a dump site because this is what it is. Experts warn that pollution can contaminate the lagoons, soil and food chain. Though specific diseases have not yet been directly linked to the site.