Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]

skip to main content
research-article

Looking Past the Miracle Box: An Exploration of Tools and Practices along the e-waste Value Chain in Ghana

Published: 29 December 2022 Publication History

Abstract

This paper focuses on tools to approach the practices inherent to the formal and informal e-waste value-chains in Ghana. Our series of field trips and interviews with e-waste collectors and scrap workers, repairers and retailers at their respective workplaces, as well as with domestic electronics users captured a situation in flux, where local authorities had implemented their decision to demolish the Agbogbloshie scrapyard site in Accra in July 2021 and relocate the workplaces within the city. In this situation, our exploratory perspective on tools and practices serves as a lense to identify possibilities of socio-technical support for repairing and upcycling and related community building.

References

[1]
Konstantin Aal, Nina Boulus-Rødje, and Markus Rohde. 2022. Media, Technologies, Cooperation--Rethinking Publics and Publicness in the MENA Region. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) (2022), 1--9. Springer.
[2]
Selase Kofi Adanu, Shine Francis Gbedemah, and Mawutor Komla Attah. 2020. Challenges of adopting sustainable technologies in e-waste management at Agbogbloshie, Ghana. Heliyon 6, 8 (2020), e04548.
[3]
Samuel Agyei-Mensah and George Owusu. 2010. Segregated by neighbourhoods? A portrait of ethnic diversity in the neighbourhoods of the Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana. Population, Space and Place 16, 6 (2010), 499--516.
[4]
Matthew Akormedi, Emmanuel Asampong, and Julius N Fobil. 2013. Working conditions and environmental exposures among electronic waste workers in Ghana. International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 19, 4 (2013), 278--286.
[5]
Ebenezer Forkuo Amankwaa. 2013. Livelihoods in risk: Exploring health and environmental implications of e-waste recycling as a livelihood strategy in Ghana. The Journal of Modern African Studies 51, 4 (2013), 551--575.
[6]
Ebenezer Forkuo Amankwaa, Kwame A Adovor Tsikudo, and Jay A Bowman. 2017. ?Away' is a place: The impact of electronic waste recycling on blood lead levels in Ghana. Science of the total environment 601 (2017), 1566--1574.
[7]
Afua Asabea Amoabeng Nti, John Arko-Mensah, Paul K Botwe, Duah Dwomoh, Lawrencia Kwarteng, Sylvia Akpene Takyi, Augustine Appah Acquah, Prudence Tettey, Niladri Basu, and Stuart Batterman. 2020. Effect of particulate matter exposure on respiratory health of e-waste workers at Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana. International journal of environmental research and public health 17, 9 (2020), 3042. Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.
[8]
Yaw Amoyaw-Osei, Obed Opoku Agyekum, John A Pwamang, Esther Mueller, Raphael Fasko, and Mathias Schluep. 2011. Ghana e-waste country assessment. SBC e-waste Africa Project 66 (2011), 111.
[9]
David Amuzu. 2018. Environmental injustice of informal e-waste recycling in Agbogbloshie-Accra: urban political ecology perspective. Local Environment 23, 6 (2018), 603--618.
[10]
Refugee Review Tribunal Australia. 2009. RRT Research Response (No. GHA34619). Technical Report. Refugee Review Tribunal Australia. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/eoir/legacy/2014/09/25/Konkomba-Nanumba% 20conflict.pdf
[11]
Jeffrey Bardzell, Shaowen Bardzell, and Austin Toombs. 2014. "Now that's definitely a proper hack" self-made tools in hackerspaces. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, New York, 473--476.
[12]
Jessica Benko. 2015. Making and Unmaking the Digital World. New York Times (June 2015), n.a. Online:https: //www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/making-and-unmaking-the-digital-world.html
[13]
Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. 2012. Thematic analysis. APA Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology Vol. 2 (2012), 57--71. https://doi.org/10.1037/13620-004
[14]
Jack Caravanos, Edith Clark, Richard Fuller, and Calah Lambertson. 2011. Assessing worker and environmental chemical exposure risks at an e-waste recycling and disposal site in Accra, Ghana. Journal of health and pollution 1, 1 (2011), 16--25.
[15]
Pádraig Carmody. 2013. A knowledge economy or an information society in Africa? Thintegration and the mobile phone revolution. Information Technology for Development 19, 1 (2013), 24--39.
[16]
Muntaka Chasant. 2021. Agbogbloshie Demolition: The End of An Era or An Injustice? https://www.muntaka.com/ agbogbloshie-demolition/
[17]
Sarah R Davies. 2017. Hackerspaces: making the maker movement. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.
[18]
David Fedele. 2011. E-wasteland.
[19]
Gerhard Fischer. 2000. Symmetry of ignorance, social creativity, and meta-design. Knowledge-Based Systems 13, 7--8 (2000), 527--537.
[20]
Vanessa Forti, Cornelis P Balde, Ruediger Kuehr, and Garam Bel. 2020. The Global E-waste Monitor 2020: Quantities, flows and the circular economy potential. United Nations University/United Nations Institute for Training and Research, International Telecommunication Union, and International Solid Waste Association, Bonn, Geneva and Rotterdam.
[21]
Richard Grant and Martin Oteng-Ababio. 2012. Mapping the invisible and real" African" economy: urban e-waste circuitry. Urban Geography 33, 1 (2012), 1--21.
[22]
Richard Grant and Martin Oteng-Ababio. 2019. Electronic-Waste Circuitry and Value Creation in Accra, Ghana. In Value Chains in Sub-Saharan Africa. Springer, 115--131.
[23]
Richard J Grant and Martin Oteng-Ababio. 2016. The global transformation of materials and the emergence of informal urban mining in Accra, Ghana. Africa Today 62, 4 (2016), 3--20.
[24]
Emma Greeson, Stefan Laser, and Olli Pyyhtinen. 2020. Dis/Assembling value: Lessons from waste valuation practices. Valuation Studies 7, 2 (2020), 151--166.
[25]
Lara Houston, Steven J Jackson, Daniela K Rosner, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, Meg Young, and Laewoo Kang. 2016. Values in repair. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. ACM, New York, 1403--1414.
[26]
Jingyu Huang, Philip Nti Nkrumah, Desmond Ofosu Anim, and Ebenezer Mensah. 2014. E-waste disposal effects on the aquatic environment: Accra, Ghana. Reviews of environmental contamination and toxicology 229 (2014), 19--34. https://doi.org/10.1007/978--3--319-03777--6_2
[27]
Natalie Roote Irie, Yu-Chang Hsu, and Yu-Hui Ching. 2019. Makerspaces in diverse places: A comparative analysis of distinctive national discourses surrounding the maker movement and education in four countries. TechTrends 63, 4 (2019), 397--407. Springer.
[28]
Steven J Jackson. 2014. Rethinking Repair. In Media technologies: Essays on communication, materiality, and society. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 221--39.
[29]
Steven J Jackson. 2019. Repair as transition: Time, materiality, and hope. In Repair Work Ethnographies. Springer, Heidelberg, 337--347.
[30]
Laewoo Kang, Taezoo Park, and Steven Jackson. 2014. Scale: human interactions with broken and discarded technologies. In CHI'14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, New York, 399--402.
[31]
Sunyoung Kim and Eric Paulos. 2011. Practices in the creative reuse of e-waste. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, New York, 2395--2404.
[32]
David Kirk, Andy Crabtree, and Tom Rodden. 2005. Ways of the hands. In Proceedings of ECSCW 2005. Springer, Heidelberg, 1--21.
[33]
Ebenezer Kumi, Morton Hemkhaus, and Tim Bauer. 2019. Money dey for borla: An assessment of Ghana's e-waste value chain. Berlin: adelphi (2019).
[34]
Josh Lepawsky and Chris McNabb. 2010. Mapping international flows of electronic waste. The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien 54, 2 (2010), 177--195.
[35]
Linda Luther. 2010. Managing electronic waste: issues with exporting e-waste. DIANE Publishing, Collingdale, PA.
[36]
Leah Maestri and Ron Wakkary. 2011. Understanding repair as a creative process of everyday design. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition. ACM, New York, 81--90.
[37]
Brian McDonough. 2019. The hands have it: tactile participation and maximum grip in the aviation sector. Qualitative Research 19, 2 (2019), 199--214. SAGE Publications.
[38]
Shaun Moores. 2014. Digital orientations:?Ways of the hand" and practical knowing in media uses and other manual activities. Mobile Media & Communication 2, 2 (2014), 196--208. SAGE Publications.
[39]
Daniel Nukpezah, Henry Ayikai Okine, Benjamin Ofori, and Martin Ababio. 2014. Electronic waste risk assessment and management in Ghana. In EnviroInfo. 205--212.
[40]
Nii Ayikwei Okine. 2021. Agbogbloshie scrap dealers ask for alternative space after demolition exercise. Citinewsroom (July 2021), n.a. https://citinewsroom.com/2021/07/agbogbloshie-scrap-dealers-ask-for-alternative-space-afterdemolition-exercise/
[41]
DK Osseo-Asare and Yasmine Abbas. 2015. Investigating 3E-materials at Agbogbloshie in Accra, Ghana. In 2015 Conference on Raising Awareness for the Societal and Environmental Role of Engineering and (Re) Training Engineers for Participatory Design (Engineering4Society). IEEE, Leuven, 41--50. https://doi.org/10.1109/Engineering4Society.2015. 7177898
[42]
Martin Oteng-Ababio, Jose Ernesto Melara Arguello, and Offira Gabbay. 2013. Solid waste management in African cities: Sorting the facts from the fads in Accra, Ghana. Habitat International 39 (2013), 96--104. Elsevier.
[43]
Martin Oteng-Ababio and Richard Grant. 2019. Ideological traces in Ghana's urban plans: How do traces get worked out in the Agbogbloshie, Accra? Habitat International 83 (2019), 1--10. Elsevier.
[44]
Karoline Owusu-Sekyere. 2018. mproving the E-Waste Management Conditions in Agbogbloshie through a Material Flow Analysis. (2018).
[45]
Sarah Pink, Jennie Morgan, and Andrew Dainty. 2014. The safe hand: Gels, water, gloves and the materiality of tactile knowing. Journal of Material Culture 19, 4 (2014), 425--442. SAGE Publications.
[46]
Cher Potter, DK Osseo-Asare, and Mugendi M'Rithaa. 2019. Crafting spaces between Design and Futures: An analysis of the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform. Journal of Futures Studies 23, 3 (2019), 39--56. Tamkung Press.
[47]
Jim Puckett. 2011. A place called away. In Permanent Error. Prestell Publishing, London.
[48]
Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, Hasan Mahmud Prottoy, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. 2019. The breaking hand: Skills, care, and sufferings of the hands of an electronic waste worker in Bangladesh. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, New York, 1--14.
[49]
Yasaman Rohanifar, Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, Nusrat Jahan Mim, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. 2019. Ambivalence: Simultaneous Tactile Experiences of Using and Recycling Smartphones. In Companion Publication of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019 Companion. ACM, New York, 53--56.
[50]
David A Rosenbaum. 2017. Knowing hands: The cognitive psychology of manual control. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
[51]
Daniela K Rosner, Steven J Jackson, Garnet Hertz, Lara Houston, and Nimmi Rangaswamy. 2013. Reclaiming repair: Maintenance and mending as methods for design. In CHI'13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, New York, 3311--3314.
[52]
Richard Sennett. 2008. The craftsman. Yale University Press, London.
[53]
Peter Skalník. 1996. Authority Versus Power: Democracy in Africa, Must Include Original African Institutions. The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 28, 37--38 (1996), 109--121. Taylor & Francis.
[54]
Markus Spitzbart. 2021. Environmentally Sound Disposal and Recycling of E-waste in Ghana. Technical Report. GIZ. https://www.giz.de/en/worldwide/63039.html
[55]
Janine Ubink. 2021. Traditional authorities in Africa. resurgence in an era of democratisation. In Encyclopedia of Law and Development. Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, 291--294.
[56]
Lee Ufan. 2010. The Art of Encounter. In The Craft Reader. Berg Publishers, Oxford, 548--551.
[57]
Maja Van der Velden and Cecilie Geirbo Hanne. 2018. Repair= care: system stories from Norway and Ghana. In Proceedings of RSD7, Relating Systems Thinking and Design 7. Open Research, Turin, 23--26. http://openresearch.ocadu. ca/id/eprint/2700/
[58]
Anne Weibert, Marios Mouratidis, Renad Khateb, Sarah Rüller, Miriam Hosak, Shpresa Potka, Konstantin Aal, and Volker Wulf. 2017. Creating Environmental Awareness with Upcycling Making Activities: A Study of Children in Germany and Palestine. ACM, 286--291.
[59]
Volker Wulf, Volkmar Pipek, David Randall, Markus Rohde, Kjeld Schmidt, and Gunnar Stevens. 2018. Socio-informatics. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
[60]
Volker Wulf, Anne Weibert, Konstantin Aal, Sarah Rüller, and Markus Rohde. 2021. The Praxeological Research Programme of Socio-Informatics--the Siegen School. Acta Informatica Pragensia 10, 3 (2021), 333--348. Publisher: Acta Informatica Pragensia

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)#Haul: An analysis of YouTube Discourse Surrounding Over-Consumption and Sustainability in Haul VideosProceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685373(1-32)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
  • (2024)Exploring the association between engagement with location-based game features and getting inspired about environmental issues and natureProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642786(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024

Index Terms

  1. Looking Past the Miracle Box: An Exploration of Tools and Practices along the e-waste Value Chain in Ghana

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
    Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction  Volume 7, Issue GROUP
    GROUP
    January 2023
    414 pages
    EISSN:2573-0142
    DOI:10.1145/3578937
    Issue’s Table of Contents
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 29 December 2022
    Published in PACMHCI Volume 7, Issue GROUP

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. e-waste
    2. ghana
    3. participatory design
    4. recycling
    5. repair
    6. tools

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)57
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)7
    Reflects downloads up to 02 Oct 2024

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)#Haul: An analysis of YouTube Discourse Surrounding Over-Consumption and Sustainability in Haul VideosProceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685373(1-32)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
    • (2024)Exploring the association between engagement with location-based game features and getting inspired about environmental issues and natureProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642786(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024

    View Options

    Get Access

    Login options

    Full Access

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Media

    Figures

    Other

    Tables

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media