For more than two decades, Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) or e-waste has been dumped at the Agbogbloshie site in Accra/Ghana, and handled by the informal sector in terms of recycling and disposal. Agbogbloshie has degraded into a paradigm of the environmental and human health burdens emanating from rapid global increases in electronics use and global trade imbalances. The site was formerly known as Old Fadama and has since been dubbed “Sodom and Gomorrha” by the local residents and international press.

GOPA Infra´s  project for Ghana’s Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI)  (with Bipro, EAP and the NGO Technology with Borders) addresses the sound disposal and recycling of WEEE and aims to reduce damage to the environment and human health caused by unsound recycling of e-waste, and at the same time to ensure livelihoods while channeling the most heavily polluting e-waste processing from the informal sector into sound recycling.

The purpose of the project is to support to Ghanaian partners to set up an incentive mechanism for sound recycling of e-waste, as well as the construction and operation of a so-called ‘Handover-Centre’ (HOC) serving as the logistical basis for reception and storage of the purchased e-wastes. This innovative project seeks to test how an incentive system for sound collection and recycling of e-waste could function and pursue the objective of contributing towards the development of a sustainable national recycling system for e-waste in Ghana.