CHEMRAWN XXII E-waste in Africa—a boost to take strong actions for a better future

CHEMRAWN XXII finally became a reality 9-11 November 2021 after a long period of planning. The corona pandemic could have killed the conference when it was ready to be launched, but after some discussion and thorough equipment testing, the organizers decided to run the meeting as a hybrid event with the physical venue in Lagos, Nigeria. In order to reduce costs and facilitate a higher participation, the conference was partly integrated with the 44^th International Conference of the Chemical Society of Nigeria, which celebrated its 50^th anniversary on this occasion. This move paid off; CHEMRAWN XXII was attended by more than 600 participants from nine countries, which is among the highest attendances any CHEMRAWN meeting has ever had.

By drawing on examples from the serious situation in Africa, the conference gave an overview of the important parameters that are entangled and make the e-waste problem enormously complex, particularly in Africa. The seriousness became crystal clear in the keynote presentations that started right after the formal opening of the conference. In the very first lecture, the problems caused by e-waste were clearly presented by Aliju Jauro, the Director General of the National Environmental Standards & Regulations Enforcement Agency in Nigeria. The diversity of the problems is enormous, and the documentation of pollution of air, land, and water; and resulting health hazards was just overwhelming. His overview gave an excellent background for later lectures delivered by professors Seun Popoola (Nigeria) and Diana Purchase (UK), who focused on chemical consequences of inadequate e-waste recycling and showed how the complex chemical composition of e-waste leads to a range of health problems and enormous challenges in pollution clean-up and land decontamination. A clear take-home message was that although there is a significant knowledge base already available to carry out such work, more research is needed to improve the level of restoration so that heavily contaminated land again can be used for pasture and other agricultural purposes. And research is indeed carried out, also in the countries affected by the misery as evidenced by the 30 posters about e-waste related problems presented during the conference.

A key element in the total e-waste picture is the illegal transportation of large quantities of such waste to African countries, and this was made crystal clear in the lectures of Oladele Osibanjo (Nigeria), a past Executive Director of the Basel Convention Coordinating Centre for the African Region, and Carlos Martin-Novella (Spain), the current Deputy Executive Secretary at the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Conventions of the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP). From their presentations it was obvious that transboundary movements of hazardous waste in principle are properly regulated through international agreements, but their implementation is generally weak and often more or less non-existent. In many countries struggling the most to solve the e-waste problems, there is no legally binding national policy in place as pointed out by several speakers, including Ifeanyi Ochonogho (Nigeria) who talked about e-waste management legislation and producers’ responsibility in Nigeria. A proposal to incorporate international conventions regulating handling and transboundary movements of hazardous waste, for instance the Basel Convention from 1989, into national legislations therefore sounds like a good idea and should therefore be followed up.

Overview of the e-waste situation in Africa and presentation of initiatives and pilots tested to change disposal and recycling practises, particularly in Kenya, constituted an important part of the program. Due to remote technical problems, speakers from South Africa and Egypt could not be connected, a consequence of which was that the situation in Kenya and Nigeria could be covered more thoroughly than planned. The miserable situation in many African countries was solidly documented by several speakers, and the recent development turned out to be more devastating than many were aware of. When the e-waste generated within Africa rose 30% from 2016-2019, on the top of the vast quantity illegally brought in, it is indeed obvious the African continent is facing a tremendous problem that needs urgent attention. This was forcefully illustrated the second day of the conference when a number of documentaries from dumping sites and recycling facilities in Africa were available for viewing on the conference website. What a relief then to learn that the problem is getting increasing attention and work to take adequate action has started. It was encouraging to listen to reports, particularly from Caroline Steinfeld, Project Manager at Sofies consultancy, UK, and Michael Koech, Safaricom (Kenya), about recent initiatives to improve the e-waste situation. In several countries there is a drive to get more of legally binding policy in place, develop better recycling infrastructure, and improve the e-waste awareness among the citizens. Then, several incentives for customers to return products that have reached end of life have been introduced on a trial basis, and some have even successfully been launched on a large scale. This, combined with building more convenient collection sites and improving the pick-up services, has already had a positive impact in some countries, and will gradually reduce the pollution and negative environmental footprints from e-waste.

The author attends the conference via zoom from his location in Bergen. Norway (photo: Kirsti Sydnes).

As pointed out by several speakers, improved e-waste collection is a necessary, but not sufficient step to solve the e-waste problem in any country; in addition and in parallel, clean-up of existing dumping sites, decontamination of polluted land, and processing of the enormous amount of waste in a sustainable manner must be accelerated. Sustainable manner in this context means that the recycling is as pollution-free as possible, but just as important, that the valuable chemicals in the waste, first and foremost precious metals, are recovered and subsequently refined to a purity that makes them perfectly suitable for reuse. What it takes to achieve this was discussed by Christer Forsgren, Environmental & Technical Director in the Swedish company Stena Metall AB, who lectured about New technologies and new opportunities and convinced the audience that safe and sustainable handling of e-waste must be based on cutting-edge technologies. As shown on illustrative slides and videos, some technologies are applied to remove toxic chemicals in a safe way, others to separate precious metals efficiently, and finally, a third group to take care of the residual waste. The combinations of technologies used in a production line depends on the composition of the e-waste, and research and development are therefore in constant demand to make sure that the handling is satisfactory. Forsgren made this point clear in his presentation, and this was further illustrated by Maurizio Peruzzini, from the Italian National Research Council, in his lecture about lithium batteries. But Peruzzini also raised another important issue related to e-waste, element depletion. Much of this waste contain elements that are not available in abundance and one day we run short of them; that is even the case with a metal as common as lithium. Thus, if the current technological level is going to be maintained, a strong 4R global, regional, and local policy has to be implemented—Recycle, Recover, Refine, Reuse.

From the closing of the physical part of the hybrid conference in Lagos, Nigeria (photo: Kevin Idehen).

Knowledge about chemical problems related to e-waste handling and recycling is quite limited even among well-educated chemists, and this state of affairs is probably due to lack of focus on such issues in chemistry programmes at university level. This assumption was obviously supported by Professor Nadia Kandile (Egypt), who lectured about e-waste topics introduced in educational programmes in chemistry at her university in Cairo. The impetus for doing so was obviously the significant e-waste problem in the country, which was a rich resource when case studies were on the agenda. The e-waste units have been in operation too short to detect visible impact, but from feedback after the lecture, it was obvious that the educational changes Kandile presented were well received by the participants.

A special part of any CHEMRAWN conference is the Future Action Committee (FAC), which is in session during the conference to pick up and review new and interesting ideas put forward in lectures and discussions with the purpose of developing projects to follow up in the future. Such a committee, with six members from four countries, was working at this conference as well. It convened before the meeting to plan its activity and met at the end of every day during the conference to discuss information presented in lectures and poster sessions and ideas put forward in roundtables and penal discussions. Ideas for new CHEMRAWN activities are currently outlined in the FAC report, which the committee aims at filing at the end of January.

CHEMRAWN XXII was the first CHEMRAWN conference carried out as a hybrid meeting, and that generated both some excitement and anxiety in the organization during the final preparations. It was therefore a pleasure to see that overall, the experience was very positive. First and foremost, several lecturers would not have been on the program if there was no virtual alternative to being present. Then, close to 100 were virtual participants, but in addition, many of those that were present in Lagos joined parts of the meeting virtually. It was also a pleasure to see that the lectures went well when the speakers had connected ahead of time and tested the system as instructed. An additional benefit I had not thought of was that interesting feedback came via zoom long after the discussion of a topic was over. But everything was not flawless of course. The most annoying problem was experienced when microphones in Lagos and the virtual connection were used simultaneously; a screaming sound was heard, and this cut the discussion short a couple of times. And irrespective of where the venue is, virtual connection can never fully replace physical presence and engaged involvement in Q&A sessions.

When the meeting was coming to an end, a clear picture of a large global problem had emerged. Many factors contribute to its complexity, many issues are entangled and have to be addressed simultaneously, many of the necessary actions to take will be very costly because only sustainable solutions are permissible, and in many countries the problem is overwhelming due to negligence and unacceptable practices in other parts of the world. And the bottom line is that most of the challenges have a chemical component that IUPAC should contribute to fix.

During the closing of the conference, the strong support from the Chemical Society of Nigeria and all the hard work done by the Local Organizing Committee, under the dedicated leadership of Prince Jay Oghifo, and the Conference Chairs were acknowledged with gratitude and enthusiasm. That was all well-deserved after a splendid event!