You can see a thick column of smoke rising from the Agbogbloshi landfill for miles around.
The air at a huge landfill in the west of Accra, the capital of Ghana, is extremely toxic.
The closer you get, the harder it is to breathe and your vision starts to blur.
Dozens of men stand around these fumes, waiting for tractors to unload piles of cables before setting them on fire.
Others climb the toxic waste mountain and bring down televisions, computers, and washing machine parts, then set them on fire.
People are extracting valuable metals such as copper and gold from electronic and electrical waste (e-waste), much of which has reached Ghana from wealthy countries.
"I don't feel well," says Abdulla Yakubu, a young worker as he burns cables and plastic, his eyes red and watery.
"The air you see is very polluted, and I have to work here every day, so it definitely affects your health," he adds.
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Abiba Alhassan, a mother of four, works at a nearby incinerator sorting used plastic bottles, and the toxic smoke doesn't spare her either.
"Sometimes it's even very difficult to breathe, I feel a lot of pressure on my chest and I feel very sick," she says.
E-waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the world, with 62 million tons generated in 2022.
That's an 82 percent increase from 2010, according to a United Nations (UN) report.
The growth of e-waste is largely driven by the electronicization of our societies — ranging from smartphones and computers to home appliances such as televisions and smart alarms to cars with built-in electronic devices, the demand for which is constantly increasing.
Annual smartphone shipments, for example, have more than doubled since 2010.
In 2023, 1,2 billion of these devices were shipped, according to this year's UN Trade and Development report.
Most confiscated item
The UN says only about 15 percent of the world's e-waste is recycled, so unscrupulous companies are looking to dispose of it elsewhere, often through intermediaries who then smuggle the waste out of the country.
Such waste is difficult to recycle due to its complex composition, which includes toxic chemicals, metals, plastics, and elements that cannot be easily separated and recycled.
Even developed countries lack adequate waste management infrastructure.
UN investigators say they have observed a significant increase in the smuggling of e-waste from developed countries and emerging economies.
It is now the most frequently seized item, accounting for one in six of all types of seized waste worldwide, the World Customs Organization said.
Officials at the port of Naples, Italy, have shown the BBC World Service how smugglers misreport and hide e-waste, which they say makes up around 30 percent of their seizures.
They show a scan of a container that was traveling to Africa, carrying a car inside, but when port officials opened the container, they found disassembled vehicle parts and e-waste crammed inside, with oil leaking from some of them.
“You don’t pack personal belongings like this, most of this is destined for waste,” says Luigi Garuto, an investigator for the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), which works with port officials across Europe.
Sophisticated smuggling tactics
In the UK, officials say they are also seeing a rise in smuggled e-waste.
At the port of Felixstowe, Ben Ryder, a spokesman for the UK Environment Agency, said that waste samples are often misreported as reusable, but in reality are “actually dismantled for precious metals and then illegally incinerated once they reach their destination” in countries such as Ghana.
Smugglers also try to hide e-waste by grinding it up and mixing it with other forms of plastic that are allowed to be exported with proper documentation, he says.
A previous report by the World Customs Organization showed that there had been a nearly 700 percent increase in the smuggling of end-of-life motor vehicles, a huge source of e-waste.
But experts say such seizures and reported cases are just the tip of the iceberg.
While there is no comprehensive global study tracking all e-waste smuggled from the developed world, a UN report shows that countries in Southeast Asia remain a frequent destination.
But while some of these countries are now trying to stop the smuggling, UN investigators and activists say more and more e-waste is finding its way into African countries.
In Malaysia, officials seized 2024 containers of hazardous e-waste from May to June 106, according to Masud Karimipur, regional representative for South-East Asia and the Pacific of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
But smugglers often outsmart authorities with new tactics, and governments fail to keep up with them quickly enough, UN investigators say.
"When ships carrying hazardous waste such as e-waste cannot easily unload them at their usual destinations, they turn off their tracking signal when they are in the middle of the ocean to avoid detection," says Karimapour.
"And the illegal shipment is dumped into the sea as part of the business model of organized criminal activity."
"There are too many groups and too many countries that benefit from this global criminal enterprise," he adds.
See how an artist from Niš gives new life to electronic waste
High-risk chemicals
Plastics and metals in e-waste, when burned or thrown away, can be very dangerous to human health and have negative consequences for the environment, according to a recent report by the World Health Organization.
She says many recipient countries also recycle e-waste informally, meaning untrained people, including women and children, do the work without protective equipment and proper infrastructure, exposing themselves to toxic substances such as lead.
The International Labor Organization and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that millions of women and children working in the informal recycling sector are at risk, and exposure during fetal and child development can cause neurodevelopmental and related neurobehavioral disorders.
From January 2025, the Basel Convention will require exporters to declare all e-waste and obtain permits from recipient countries.
Investigators hope this will plug some of the loopholes that smugglers use to ship such waste around the world.
There are some countries, including the US (a major exporter of e-waste) that have not ratified the Basel Convention, and activists say this could continue to be a reason for the continued smuggling of e-waste.
“As we tighten controls, the US is now sending more and more trucks across the border to Mexico,” says Jim Paquette, executive director of the Basel Action Network, an organization that advocates for an end to the trade in toxic materials, including e-waste.
Meanwhile, at the Agbogbloshi landfill in Ghana, the situation is getting worse every day.
Habiba says she spends almost half of the money she earns from collecting waste on medication to cope with a health condition that arose from working at the landfill.
"But I'm still here because this is the only way for me and my family to survive."
The Ghana Revenue Authority and the Ministry of Environment did not respond to our numerous requests for comment.
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