Bill Rathje’s research of the American landfill painted a dark tale of the direction of our consumerist society. The immense waste of resources and lack of accountability will, according to Rathje, eventually lead to a culture collapse. Looking into today, we face more challenges despite the enormous technological progress we’ve enjoyed. Rather than improve our situation and more effectively use our resources, we face new issues in the form of electronic waste, the discard of electrical and electronic devices.

Today, much of the world’s e-waste originates from developed nations in the Western World such as the United States and Europe. The United Nations estimates that over 50 million tons of e-waste are discarded each year. And as our world’s reliance on technology grows and our current products updated, this number is sure to increase.

It is estimated that 75% of all e-waste is exported to developing countries around the world such as Ghana and Pakistan. The recycling of e-waste is often too costly in developed countries, making dumping a more economical option. Additionally, exporting out e-waste likely prevents the environmental and health dangers of recycling.

In cities where e-waste is dumped, such as Agbogbloshie, Ghana, and Karachi, Pakistan, the local communities have repurposed the e-waste into an economy based on the recycling and reuse of the dumped appliances. They are either repaired in order to be resold, or more likely, disassembled to recover raw materials such as copper, silver, gold, and steel.

Figure 1. A worker burns away wiring insulation in order to extract the copper in Agbobloshie, Ghana.

The dumping of e-waste presents enormous health and environmental concerns to the local community. In the case of Agbogbloshie and Karachi, people are continually affected by the toxins and chemicals released by the burning of e-waste. Workers, especially, are affected by the toxic chemicals as they extract the raw materials from the e-waste. Almost everyone becomes at risk from exposure to lead, cadmium, and other disruptive chemicals.

Figure 2. Various electronic components are transported to be recycled in Karachi, Pakistan.

Studying communities such as Agbogbloshie and Karachi reveals the patterns that affect e-waste dumpsites around the world. For example, even in such an environment such as Agbogbloshie and Karachi, there remains a stark divide between those who utilize the e-waste. ‘Resellers’, often able to receive old or unused electronics, are able to make profits of thousands of Euros a month. Meanwhile, the majority of e-waste workers rely on a subsistence scavenging for grams of materials at a time. Also, the exploitation of developing countries as dumping grounds hark back to previous colonial exploitation of natural resources. And finally, it is the poor that are the most affected by the dumping of e-waste.

In summation, the dump of e-waste in developing countries does not represent an adequate solution as our world becomes both more technologically advanced and consumerist. The dumping of e-waste reflects just a transference of the root problem to other groups and cultures. All in all, e-waste represents the denial and postponement of developed nations actively addressing the growing environmental and health dangers of our trash.

Works Cited:

Blau, John
2006  UN summit on e-waste. CIO UK. CIO UK, 28 November 2006.
.
Accessed September 16, 2018.

Kuper, Jo
2008   Poisoning the poor: Electronic waste in Ghana. Greenpeace. Greenpeace, August 2008.. Accessed September 16, 2018.

2016  ToxiCity: life at Agbobloshie, the world’s largest e-waste dump in Ghana. YouTube. Youtube, 01 June 2016. .
accessed September 16, 2018.

2016  The Toxic E-Waste Trade Killing Pakistan’s Poorest. YouTube. YouTube, 11 July 2016. . accessed September 16, 2018.

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The small town of Ipplepen is located in the southwest corner of England, in South Devon.  As of 2011, Ipplepen is a small town with fewer than 3000 residents. Although it has such a small population, the area has a very long history, with settlements stretching back to the Iron Age.  Since 2010, archaeologists from the University of Exeter and the British Museum have been excavating the sites, which in total span 1200 years of history.

Recently, a team has excavated several locations containing garbage from the end of the Roman era.  Analysis of the recovered artifacts has allowed researchers to piece together elements of the residents’ lives, such as their diet.  In the garbage piles, animal bones have been preserved for thousands of years. According to the lead archaeologist on the team, Stephen Rippon, these animal can be used “to reconstruct past patterns of farming…Some of the bones that have been found have cut marks from when they were butchered.”  The age of the animals when they were butchered gives information about local farming practices. For example, lambs would have been killed for meat, whereas older sheep would have been kept around for milk and wool.  Through reconstructing the diets and farming practices of Roman-Age South Devon residents, researchers are able to better understand the area’s history.

Archaeologists excavating at Ipplepen in 2016.

The garbage has also provided clues into the financial status of the town.  Among the artifacts recovered are some pieces of ancient pottery. Some of it is amphora, a type of pottery used to carry olive oil and wine made in the Mediterranean.  Elsewhere at the site, a piece of an expensive cup was discovered. The style of the cup suggests that it was originally made in southeast England, and likely would have been someone’s valuable possession (until it broke).  Residents were not, then, just poor farmers, as one might be inclined to think. Instead, these artifacts suggest that at least some of the residents were well-off, since they could afford Mediterranean wine and expensive pottery.

Some examples of amphora vases, used to hold wine and olive oil.

Throughout the Ipplepen excavation, researches have made a number interesting discoveries about the history of South Devon.  Among those are a Roman road that once ran through the area, a graveyard from medieval times, and roundhouses from the end of the Iron Age.  But trash tells a different, less obvious story than these structures do; it tells us about the day-to-day things that people did that they didn’t view as remarkable, such as eating meat and drinking wine.  However, to an archaeologist, these discoveries provide valuable information about the living habits and status of a people or a settlement, such as in South Devon.

Sources:

Phys.org

2017  “Rare Archeological Find Could Be the First Time Unique Pottery Seen in the Southwest.” Archaeology & Fossils, Phys.org. Electronic Document, June 28, 2017, https://phys.org/news/2017-06-rare-archaeological-unique-pottery-south.html, accessed 13 September 2018.

University of Exeter

 2018  “Ancient Household Waste Gives More Clues About Devon’s Roman History.” Research News, University of Exeter. Electronic Document, September 5, 2018, http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/research/title_679888_en.html, accessed 12 September 2018.

Wikipedia

 2018  “Ipplepen.” Wikipedia. Electronic Document, September 8, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipplepen, accessed 12 September, 2018

Image Sources:

Ipplepen Archaeological Project.

 2016  “2016 Excavation Day 2.” Ipplepen Archaeological Project (blog), June 8, 2016, http://ipplepen.exeter.ac.uk/2016/06/2016-excavation-day-2-7th-june/, accessed September 15, 2018.

Wikipedia.

 2018  “Amphora.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphora, accessed September 15, 2018.

Further reading:

“Digging Up the Roots of Modern Waste in Victorian-Era Rubbish”: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/06/01/480268469/digging-up-the-roots-of-modern-waste-in-victorian-era-rubbish

“Trash or Treasure?”: https://www.cnn.com/2011/10/04/world/europe/archaeology-ancient-trash/index.html

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