> "There’s a whole generation of young people that are building their society from e-waste work."
This is hard, dangerous, indecent work by any first world standard, but it's still work, it's still opportunity, and it's still an industry for people who otherwise might not have one. I don't wish to see this kind of pollution and suffering exist, but I also don't wish to take away something that despite its awfulness is still someone's livelihood. Ladders need bottom rungs. When they closed sweatshops in Bangladesh, the children had to resort to prostitution.
And yet coal wealth was tremendously beneficial for those communities. Kids-in-mines was ended by better labor regulation, not by cutting off the source of the wealth. Ghana has an amazing opportunity here. The world is literally shipping gold to their doorstep. There has got to be a solution that improves standards without cutting them out of the loop.
Any law that improves standards will increase cost and then they don't get the scrap anymore, someone else without laws will. The market will find a place.
This is hard, dangerous, indecent work by any first world standard, but it's still work, it's still opportunity, and it's still an industry for people who otherwise might not have one. I don't wish to see this kind of pollution and suffering exist, but I also don't wish to take away something that despite its awfulness is still someone's livelihood. Ladders need bottom rungs. When they closed sweatshops in Bangladesh, the children had to resort to prostitution.