In Agbogbloshie, a slum in Accra, the capital of Ghana, adults and children tear away at computers from abroad to get at the precious metals inside. Left, David Akore, 18, and other foragers. Credit: Pieter Hugo for The New York Times.
Their response is a reminder of the alien circumstances that are imposed on marginal communities of the world by the West’s obsession with consumption and obsolescence. This wasteland, where people and cattle live on mountains of motherboards, monitors and discarded hard drives, is far removed from the benefits accorded by the unrelenting advances of technology.
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Hey, Thanks for sharing, these images remind me of doc. that I saw on npr from asia about this subject, it was a while back, it reinforced my feeling that art is starting to predict the future, which needs to end. All those sci fi movies in the 90’s are here on our doorstep, ironically I just got in from looking for LED’s for a project for our 8 soon to be 9 y.o. boy’s birthday party, a dark illuminated jousting/femcing/starwars type event in the back yard, going to make sheilds lied with led’s ect.. no one could help me at the stores they looked at me like I was some weirdo . “why don’t you just buy them already made” Here is another kicker from the useless shack, “you’ll have to get those at party city” I didn’t realize party city sold LED’s I said, I was looking for a large quantity anyhow you know where this is going…again thanks, I hope more then just the reuse repurpose community reads your feeds
D
This makes me sad 🙁
I used to work for a computer recycling company that claimed that they never sent anything out of the united states.
At one point that i was working there in the “Monitor Testing” area. Basically i plugged in a monitor to see if it worked. If it didn’t it went onto a pallet of monitors. After about 32 pallets were built me and 3 other guys had to take them apart and load them into these shipping containers packing as many as we could from top to bottom.
The trucks with the containers never left during the day when there were people there only at the cover of night.
I was naive at the time not really wondering where the monitors went, and upper management just said things like “oh over there” waived their hands in a random direction then would walk away.
What I always found strange was that the containers always had cardboard on them to cover the name of the shipper. So one night I stayed around hiding in the adjacent parking lot and I took this photo http://wtfmoogle.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/0121080716.jpg
Later I confronted management about it and they said that it was Illegal to ship broken or bad monitors to china but it was perfectly legal to ship “untested electronics” (a total lie as i tested these monitors)
Hey, Thanks for sharing, these images remind me of doc. that I saw on npr from asia about this subject, it was a while back, it reinforced my feeling that art is starting to predict the future, which needs to end. All those sci fi movies in the 90’s are here on our doorstep, ironically I just got in from looking for LED’s for a project for our 8 soon to be 9 y.o. boy’s birthday party, a dark illuminated jousting/femcing/starwars type event in the back yard, going to make sheilds lied with led’s ect.. no one could help me at the stores they looked at me like I was some weirdo . “why don’t you just buy them already made” Here is another kicker from the useless shack, “you’ll have to get those at party city” I didn’t realize party city sold LED’s I said, I was looking for a large quantity anyhow you know where this is going…again thanks, I hope more then just the reuse repurpose community reads your feeds
D
This makes me sad 🙁
I used to work for a computer recycling company that claimed that they never sent anything out of the united states.
At one point that i was working there in the “Monitor Testing” area. Basically i plugged in a monitor to see if it worked. If it didn’t it went onto a pallet of monitors. After about 32 pallets were built me and 3 other guys had to take them apart and load them into these shipping containers packing as many as we could from top to bottom.
The trucks with the containers never left during the day when there were people there only at the cover of night.
I was naive at the time not really wondering where the monitors went, and upper management just said things like “oh over there” waived their hands in a random direction then would walk away.
What I always found strange was that the containers always had cardboard on them to cover the name of the shipper. So one night I stayed around hiding in the adjacent parking lot and I took this photo
http://wtfmoogle.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/0121080716.jpg
Later I confronted management about it and they said that it was Illegal to ship broken or bad monitors to china but it was perfectly legal to ship “untested electronics” (a total lie as i tested these monitors)