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If you are ever unfortunate enough to be upwind of the Agbobloshie dump in Accra, capital of the West African country of Ghana, you might want to wear a gas mask.  Will Ross, a BBC correspondent wrote a great piece earlier this month that shines a light on the practice of shipping e-waste to other countries. The BBC reports that Great clouds of acrid black smoke corrupt the air.  People are burning off the plastic coatings on computer cable to capture the copper.  Children maneuver through the dump looking to smash computer monitors to sell the metal inside them. It’s illegal, but unwanted computers from industrial countries arriving in Third World Countries are dumped, turning the water and earth into toxic swamps. Environmental journalist Mike Anane has been keeping tabs on this phenomenon.  Although the computers arriving in the Ghanese port of Tema are marked “usable second-hand goods,” Anane has found that only about 10 percent are functional.   “The rest go straight to Agbobloshie dump site and other dumps around the country where they contaminate ground water, surface water, the rivers and the streams.   And they all end up in the sea, and that’s where we get all the fish.” The United Nations estimates that 20 to 50 million tons of e-waste are produced yearly. And you know what – those e-dump mountains start one iPod, one computer, one cell phone at a time.  It starts with that Blackberry of yours that you don’t want anymore.  You might think, “I’m busy. If I throw the Blackberry into the trash, what difference will it make?” Multiply that one by hundreds and thousands of others, and the effect on the environment is tremendous. But now you have an alternative that’s just as easy as tossing your device into the trash.  You can send it to Gazelle.  We’ll promote the cycle of reuse by paying you for that gadget and reselling  it.  If your item is too old or in too poor condition for resale, we will make sure it is recycled responsibly—for free!

What does “responsible” mean?  Our recycling partners are based in the United States, and the items we send them to be broken down into parts do not leave the country.  And they do not end up in the Agbobloshie dump. You can make a difference and end what the environmental group Greenpeace calls “poisoning the poor.” And you might even make money doing it.  Be Green.  Get Green.  That’s Gazelle.