Well, I was actually a little worried about what I was going to find concerning environmentalism and racism, but I found some information and one caught my attention immediately due to a phrase I read. In USA Today, there was an article concerning Greenpeace wishing to stop the electronic waste that is being dumped in places like Ghana, "where discarded TVs and computers that contain toxic materials are being dismantled by children as young as 5." That particular phrase made me decide to focus on the electronic waste being dumped in Ghana and the dangerous toxins that the children and people there are being exposed to. The shipments that are being dumped are coming from the European Union. An article in E-waste states that about 75% of the European Union's e-waste is likely ending up in Ghana. I was surprised by this as I honestly thought that the United States was the only country doing such things (they are also dumping in Ghana), but apparently I was wrong.

These articles are all quite recent, dating July and October of this year and give not only statistical numbers like the one provided above, but they also show that places like Greenpeace are fighting this as best they can; however, I don't think enough people are aware of this. Even most articles in major papers do not focus on these hazards. They make a small article about it and that seems to be it. This kind of information is not mainstream. This information should be published and available to many people, particularly those in school as I feel that education and awareness, when properly executed go hand in hand and maybe if more students read about this kind of information and saw visual images of what is occurring there, they would be more moved to write and contact government officials to effect change. After all, we accept products from these countries committing these acts here. If we were to change our habits of disposing e-waste and not only offer more incentives to companies that properly dispose of waste, but also let it be understood that these countries are not the only ones affected, as we are all connected and these acts will come back to haunt us so we will not accept products from countries that continue to dispose of their e-waste in such a fashion, then perhaps, we can affect change.


This photo was taken by Greenpeace member, Kate Davison and is in this article written on the Treehugger site also about Accra, Ghana and the e-waste dangers. This is extremely dangerous in a number of ways. Constantly throwing out old televisions and computers that still work for the latest models also creates a problem. They are also concerned about the analog/digital conversion in the US as a lot of old televisions will be dumped and will most likely end up in Ghana, being burned with a child running by inhaling the toxic fumes.

I'm going to search for more articles concerning the specific name brand of the products being disposed of and what, if anything, is truly being done to stop this. The unfortunate thing is I think people are too hung up on labeling. For example, an in-depth paper on something such as this would likely end up in an environmental newspaper or magazine; unfortunately, only hardcore environmentalists may read this paper and this is information they would most likely find on their own. The question is how to reach the people who pick up the regular papers, or don't pick up the regular papers at all. There has to be several different methods to disperse this paper. Perhaps in a free newspaper, but perhaps also getting people in school to hand these papers out, or even have more writing assignments such as this not only in an LIB200 course, but many other course like English and Philosophy where writing and critical thought merge.