A group of 10 graduate students from UBC Journalism have just won an Emmy award for a news documentary that investigates electronic waste (“e-waste”; such as discarded hard drives, cell phones, TV’s) and its impact on our health and environment. I’m proud that students from our own school won such a prestigious award and glad that they were recognized for uncovering this hidden global issue.
Their documentary, entitled Digital Dumping Ground, traces the path of e-waste to Ghana, China, and India – all smoldering wastelands where heaps of e-waste from the rest of the world has been dumped there. This raises concerns not just for people living in these places but it causes problems worldwide. Firstly, it has turned into a business where the locals sort and burn the waste to see what metals are left that they can re-sell. Even children are doing this and the burn sites are often near the shanty dwellings where they play, eat and live. Secondly, criminals and scammers sometimes look through the thrown away hard drives for personal info and even valuable company info, leading to serious data fraud. In fact, it was found that Ghana is listed as one of the top sources of cyber crime in the world by the U.S. State Department.
This information was alarming to me because I would think that high-tech industries know to recycle responsibly. Besides, the culprits can be easily traced since many of the hard drives and containers still have company labels on them. Now that the documentary has raised more awareness about this issue, I hope changes will be made. Perhaps stricter laws can be imposed to regulate electronic waste disposal.
And to think that technology solves problems..
To watch the video or read the synopsis: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/
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