E-waste Hand Over Centre inaugurated in Accra

 An electronic waste (e-waste) Hand Over Centre (HOC), meant to serve as a storage or collect point of e-waste products, was inaugurated in Accra on Friday.

Apart from serving as a stor­age or collection point, the HOC would help facilitate the recycling process of e-waste products in line with global best practices.

The e-waste HOC formed part of the “Recycling and Dis­posal of Electronic and Electrical Equipment in an Environmentally Sound Way,” project initiated by the government, through the Ministry of Environment, Sci­ence, Technology, and Innovation (MESTI) in partnership with the German Government, through KfW.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, the sector Minister, Mrs Ophelia Mensah Hayford, said the establishment of the HOC was a testament to the government’s commitment to both the environ­ment and public health.

She also noted that the facility marked the reflection of the achievements of the e-waste project which included the safe collection of over 476.88 tons of e-waste cables, 37.03 tons of mixed batteries, 31.83 tons of thermoplas­tics, and 87.00 sets of Cathode Ray Televisions (CRT).

Mrs Hayford further indicated that the partnership with various stakeholders such as the Environ­mental Protection Agency (EPA), Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs), and the e-waste fund had resulted in a system that incentivised safe disposal of e-waste, created over 450 green jobs , and trained more than 200 scrap dealers in the safe handling of e-waste.

“It is our firm conviction that this initiative will strengthen the capacity of local e-waste handlers to properly manage electronic waste in ways that reduce the associated risks and increase value recovery,” Mrs Hayford added.

She also expressed her pro­found gratitude to all relevant stake­holders, including scrap dealers, for their commitment and cooperation in ensuring that the e-waste project remained a success.

In 2016, the government passed Act 917 to deal with the issue of e-waste management after media reports by local and international media on the use of unconvention­al, crude methods such as burning and acid leaching to extract valuable metals from e-waste materials at Agbogbloshie and its health risk on the citizenry.

Following the passage of Act 917, the government, in a bilateral collaboration with the Federal Re­public of Germany through BMZ and implemented by KFW, started the implementation of the ‘Recy­cling and Disposal of Electronic and Electrical Equipment in an En­vironmentally Sound Way’ project, expected to end next year.

An amount of €20 million was earmarked by the project partners for the project which had three components, namely, supply side, which focused on the incentive col­lection of e-waste, Hand Over Cen­tre, which focused on the storage of e-waste, and the demand side, which focused on the tendering and recycling of e-waste in an environ­mentally sound manner.