Q&A: Insights from a global e-waste hotspot

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As Africa navigates a circular transition, Brandon Marc Finn of the University of Michigan warns that the continent’s informal e-waste economy exposes a central contradiction in global circularity where the very systems that keep materials circulating also concentrate environmental and health risks among informal workers.

• Mr Finn is an Assistant Research Scientist at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability and leads the Informal Sustainability Lab, an interdisciplinary research group focused on informality and sustainability. He led the research team behind a recent study called The Informal Paradox: Electronic Waste and the Toxic Circular Economy in Ghana, which examined e-waste recycling in Agbogbloshie, often described as one of the world’s largest e-waste dumps.

• In an interview with Circular Rising, the urbanisation and informality scholar breaks down the study’s findings, highlighting the “informal paradox” of Ghana’s e-waste sector, a dynamic that resonates across Africa, where informal recycling sustains livelihoods while concentrating pollution and health burdens in spaces beyond effective regulation.

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In your study, you describe Ghana’s e-waste sector as an “informal paradox.” What does that mean in practice?

Dr Finn: That’s the central idea of the paper, the informal paradox. Informality is double-sided. On the one hand, it provides livelihoods and shelter for people excluded from the formal economy, including migrants and low-income households for whom formal jobs or housing are simply inaccessible. Barriers such as limited education, high capital requirements, and oversaturated labour markets mean the informal economy becomes a primary means of survival for many people.  This work can be inefficient and is often linked to social and environmental harm, but it also forms the backbone of survival for billions of people worldwide. That’s something I want to respect in my work and not dismiss out of hand.

The other side is that informality, by definition, is not regulated, registered, or protected by the state. Labour standards are weak, housing and building regulations are poorly enforced, and harmful practices can emerge, particularly in the e-waste sector. In our research, we show how this plays out through practices such as the open-burning of electronic goods, acid leaching, open dumping of plastic waste, and severe pollution of the adjacent lagoon. When we think about the paradox, we have to hold both of these realities at once. The negative impacts are not confined to the immediate neighbourhood or city; the emissions themselves are a global concern. This creates a grey moral space around economic generation, sustainability, governance, and urban planning. When I talk about the toxic circular economy, my argument is not against circularity itself; rather, we need to recognise that a circular economy that does not attend to the most marginalised people who make it circular in the first place is not inherently just or sustainable.

You’ve described places like Agbogbloshie as a “toxic end-of-life node” in the circular economy. What conditions cause a material recovery system to become harmful rather than sustainable?

Dr Finn: I think we need to think about the issue of scale. There’s the neighbourhood scale where this is happening, in this case, with little or no regulation in place. That means people deal with e-waste in whatever way is most expedient or quickest, not necessarily the most profitable. That leads to the environmental pollution I mentioned earlier. I also work on mining, specifically cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The DRC produces around three-quarters of the world’s total mined cobalt, which is used in lithium-ion batteries globally. In public health research on heavy metal exposure in Agbogbloshie, researchers found extremely high levels of cobalt in the soil, water samples, and, critically, in the blood and urine of people living and working in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama.

Ghana does not have notable cobalt deposits. This means we are seeing a supply chain that starts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, moves into our phones and laptops around the world, and then ends up at the end of the supply chain. It reaches the last node before materials re-enter the formal supply chain, landing in places like Agbogbloshie for people to deal with. That represents the global scale. We can also think about the relationship between the Global North and South and the role of political actors. There are conventions such as the Basel Convention and the Bamako Agreement that aim to regulate the flow of e-waste and limit the export of hazardous waste to countries with weaker regulations. However, these are not strongly enforced or effective in addressing e-waste comprehensively. When you consider these different scales of impact, it becomes clearer why this occurs in specific places and which regulatory levers might be used to address it.

There’s often an assumption that more recycling automatically equals environmental benefit. What does your work suggest policymakers and industry may be overlooking in that equation?

Dr Finn:  I’m in favour of recycling. But recycling, from a global perspective, and recycling in conditions of extreme poverty and dispossession over long periods, does not necessarily equate to sustainability. Sustainability is not only an environmental concern. It is also a social one. The classical definition of sustainable development from the Brundtland Commission in 1987 is meeting the needs of the present without compromising those of the future. If we think about meeting the needs of the present, we have to consider the social needs of people in the present. To me, that means livelihood generation. That means places to live that provide people with integrity and some opportunity to pursue upward mobility. So if recycling is treated as a core pillar of sustainability, which I believe it should be, we also need to account for its social impacts, not just its environmental outcomes.

As African countries develop circular economy strategies, what lessons should they take from the realities of informal e-waste recycling?

Dr Finn: From copper to cobalt and aluminium, there is a large and valuable industry that could be used to help develop African economies. Africa also has a tremendous resource in labour value. Near e-waste sites, there may be opportunities to train people to process e-waste with relatively minimal capital, while developing more transparent connections within e-waste supply chains. At the moment, we often don’t know who materials are changing hands with, or under what conditions. We tend to focus on transparency at the start of mineral supply chains: where the materials come from, where they go, and how they are processed and refined. But in a circular economy, e-waste becomes the last node of the supply chain and then the first node again. That means transparency is just as important at this end of the system.

In 2019, the estimated value of materials present in global electronic waste stocks was $65 billion. That represents a huge opportunity, especially given that global annual e-waste production was 62 million tonnes in 2020 and is projected to rise to 82 million tonnes by 2030. There may also be opportunities for countries that develop nimble approaches to e-waste management to grow their economies. From an economic perspective, value exists not only at the start of the supply chain in mineral extraction but also at the end through responsible recycling. This can help mitigate the harms of mining itself by recovering and valorising minerals from used and unusable electronics. As African countries continue to develop circular economy strategies and waste management plans, these considerations become increasingly important.

If an African country were building an e-waste management system today, based on your research, what would you recommend as the top priorities to ensure material recovery does not come at the expense of worker health and environmental safety?

Dr Finn: They should work with, rather than against, informal waste recyclers, waste pickers, and processors. These are the people who are predominantly making the circular economy circular in the first place. And so, if we recognize that there's a paradox not just when it comes to e-waste, but to all waste and to all sanitation. You think about the incredible informal sanitation work done by ordinary people in Kenya to ensure that sanitation and toileting systems run. You can also think about the paradox in that way. They're generating economic livelihoods for themselves and they're contributing to their community at large. Not that that process is not without harm, but it's a valuable service that anyone would need in that kind of situation.

In another paper with close collaborator Dr Elmond Bandauko, we call it  ‘supported self-provisioning.’ It starts with recognizing that self-provisioning already happens, but it needs some form of acknowledgement and legitimization by the state or the city municipality, as well as technical expertise and training, and some form of capital support for that process. When you provide capital support, you could make it contingent on certain occupational standards. You have to wear PPE for certain activities. You have to declare who you're selling to, and you have to present a permit to that person to enable the supply chain to become circular. So, this kind of hybrid governance to catalyse the exceptional number of people working in the informal sector is the challenge and the opportunity.  

If you were to return to Agbogbloshie five years from now, what changes would you hope to see on the ground?

Dr Finn:  I would hope to see no open burning. The open burning is a tremendous harm, not just to families, including pregnant women and small children living right there. I am an abolitionist on child labour, which is prevalent in the e-waste and mining industry, so that should be addressed as a priority. Schooling and poverty relief will help resolve this persistent issue. E-waste emissions are severe, and I would like to see stronger regulation on where and how it is burned. I would also like to see the nearby lagoon cleaned, which would require municipal intervention, and to see plastic waste removed from the settlement itself. More broadly, I would like to see a hybrid approach in which city authorities, including the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, are present, while also recognising that people will not switch to fully formal e-waste processing overnight. That includes basic infrastructural development, such as improved water supply.