Trafficking e-waste from Global North to Global South

To move e-waste from Norway to Ghana you have to cross about 6,000 km of ocean (about 3,300 miles). It’s worth it. It makes economic sense. And it’s better for the Norwegian environment, of course, seeing that Norwegians have for years been the number one producer of e-waste per person in the world. E-waste is particularly profitable for one group: criminals. It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry full of forged custom documents delivering “high quality” second-hand equipment to needy schools. Such trafficking is comparable in some cases to the illegal drug trade, but with much lower sanctions. So much of the e-waste industry is semi-legal and criminal minded, with the brands and the e-waste exporters always looking for ways to skirt regulations, bribe officials. When the Indian government tried to improve working conditions for e-waste workers, LG and Samsung sued it. Big Tech have designed things so that there is little or no money in recycling electronics. Therefore, the margins are so tight in processing e-waste in Global North countries that dumping it in the Global South becomes irresistible. According to the US EPA, “an undetermined amount of used electronics are shipped from the