Very crudely breaking up the scrap, it's sometimes a rock and a chisel, sometimes a hammer and a chisel. There wasn't many screwdrivers or, proper tools even being used in most cases. Smashing it to pieces to get to precious metals, copper, gold, even steel and aluminium. They're salvaging anything they can get money for. And the fastest way to get to it is burning it. Melt away all the plastic and you're left with the metal behind. Hi everyone. Welcome to episode 60 of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast. My name is Tom Raftery, and with me on the show today I have my special guest, Kenny. Kenny, welcome back. You are on the podcast last year, Kenny, for people who may have missed that episode, can you give us a quick intro? Thank you, Tom. Yes Kenny McGee, CEO and founder of Component Sense. We predominantly help very large companies reduce excess and obsolete components. Our goal is to prevent stock like that ending up in landfill. So we want to make sure that our clients get the most money back possible for it. So the earlier we can identify it the better. And how does that work? Just again, we'll keep it brief because we've had a full episode on this before Sure. it's quite simple. We've got software systems that can connect and talk to any MRP system or take standard files from an MRP system that allow us to see what is and isn't excess on any given day. And we market that globally, all over the world. We've got four and a half thousand partners that buy from us so we can get your stock to market. We can typically return all of the costs. So try and take away all the barriers. Make it easy to do the right thing and prevent waste. The last time you were on the podcast, Kenny, you mentioned briefly a trip to Ghana to see if I can get the name of this correct, Agbogbloshie, A place near Accra in Ghana, where there's a massive dump for waste, primarily, if I remember correctly, e-waste and clothing waste. And you went there with a, an Italian, if I remember correctly, journalist, to kind of document what's happening there before we go too much into that, let's take a step back and tell me why, why did you go there? What was the kind of thinking behind it? What was your, what were you hoping to find there? Yes, so Agbogbloshie is world famous for all the wrong reasons. It is or has been known as the world's largest e-waste dump site. So I've been aware of it for some time. About 2007 roughly I saw a documentary about it. And it was e-waste from the UK that was ending up in this particular documentary in Ghana. Now, we're not allowed to send our e-waste out of country, and that's been the case since about 2000. So it really shocked me, and it was a local dump. It was a dump literally minutes from my house that they'd tracked a device. I think it was a TV. And it arrived in Ghana. So that was the first thing that really caught my eye. And I was really shocked because we were very proudly, our local council was very proudly stating that 80 percent at that time of our waste, all waste, was being recycled. So, of course, if I took something there, I assumed it was recycled responsibly. So to find out that it was potentially ending up in another country, and maybe even in the scrap yard was really quite shocking. So, I've seen lots of documentaries since, and I've always wanted to really go and find out what's going on on the ground, because I would like to contribute, I would like to help, I would like to try and solve some of these problems. I knew it would be complicated, but I was never going to learn anything watching it on TV. So, I decided to delve a bit deeper. One of our marketing team managed to find Carolina Rapezzi, who was a photographer, a photojournalist, who'd been out a few times. So, she was very passionate about the living standards of the people there, I suppose, is probably more her focus. But she'd been out and visited a few times and was very knowledgeable. She happily gave us some photographs to use in some blog posts that we were writing about the conditions out there. Which was very kind of her. We then decided to bring her up to Scotland to interview her and learn more about it. And we, we captured that. It's on YouTube. The Chat between me and her and it literally we just captured it live. We just decided to capture it live. No, no rehearsals, and it was literally just me asking and learning as much as I could about Agbobloshie It was really heartbreaking to see her images and hear her stories It really was. It was quite shocking. So pretty much decided during that interview to go. And so we booked it. I think that was July and then in September we were literally out there. So it was great going with somebody that had been before. She knew her way around. She had people out there that could help us. So we had a fixer that could set us up and keep us safe as well. It's pretty pretty safe. I felt safe. I've got to be honest, but it was yeah, it's very different, very different walking around in these areas and maybe we wouldn't have been as safe. I stand out a mile. The big shiny white head stands out a mile in a place like that. And I was wearing a really silly looking hat at times just to protect myself from the sun, because I'm not very good in the sun. Scots aren't famous for handling the sunshine. I can sympathise It was just, it was amazing to see it, but I also want you to understand the bigger picture, you know, how's the stuff getting there? How does it end up in this wasteland? There's a whole complex supply chain attached to it. So, it was really interesting. The problem is bigger and infinitely more complex than I perhaps thought at first. Which is always the case. And again, that's the reason I had to go and see it for myself and get a sense of what's involved. But my hope at the end of the day is that I can bring some big players. You know, we work with very large electronic manufacturers. My hope is that we can bring them to the party to try and help solve some of the problems out there. And it's not just e-waste, I've been posting regularly on social media recently about my experiences and I've been trying to just post again almost day by day like a diary of my own discovery. And I've had some comments from people that have got a particular angle and they're protective of part of that supply chain, you know, so there's lots of people that are doing repairs out there. So in my longer piece, I acknowledge that's brilliant, cause actually repairing devices and getting them a longer life is a brilliant thing and we can't afford, well, nobody's prepared to pay UK labor rates to, to repair a TV nowadays, so tiniest little fault that goes in the bin, doesn't it? They're very resourceful and they will do everything they can to repair it. I absolutely applaud that. There's also a massive second hand trade out there where they do want our old devices, even if we think they're damaged or old or inferior, there is a market there for them, but it's complicated. It's really, really complicated because I would never want to see people out of work. There is literally hundreds of thousands of people involved in this trade, including the scrap yard. My goal was always to, to have the adults working in quality jobs and the kids at school. So when I first saw how life looks and feels out there that, that was my initial feeling was, could we not recycle responsibly in Ghana and teach them how to do that, help them to do that, maybe fund a proper recycling plant so that it was done safely and in a way that doesn't harm the environment. That would be the ultimate goal and get the kids into school. So that, that was the original goal. But now I've seen this bigger supply chain. How do you protect those people's livelihoods? Definitely becomes much more complicated. Okay. Obviously you were there on the ground. We haven't been. So can you paint a picture for us of what you found when you went there? What did you expect to find and what did you find and how did the two differ? The documentaries give you a a fair idea of the worst elements of it, I suppose. The fire is the thing that you typically see. The fire and the smoke and the toxicity of the place. You know, if you're burning plastics, of course the smoke's gonna be really nasty and toxic and it absolutely is. So that was probably my first impression was I saw what I expected to see, albeit it was much bigger than I thought. So again, in a documentary, it looks really quite horrifying, but face to face with it, the scale was huge. The size of the place was enormous. We've got estimates of how many people live in this, it's basically a slum area. And the workshops are right outside the houses. So they're literally working right beside where they live. Very Very crudely breaking up the scrap, it's sometimes a rock and a chisel, sometimes a hammer and a chisel. There wasn't many screwdrivers or, proper tools even being used in most cases. So it's kind of smashing it to pieces to get to precious metals, copper, gold, even steel and aluminium, they're salvaging anything they can get money for. And the fastest way to get to it is burning it. Melt away all the plastic and you're left with the metal behind. So cable, there's a lot of cable getting burnt. And of course the plastic on a cable is filled with fire retardants. It's designed not to burn. You don't want cables in your house or in your car burning, so they're designed not to burn, so to get them to burn they're actually using plastics and foams from refrigerators to get more heat out of the fire, so they're adding plastic to try and try and get it hotter Wow. And it works and it's fast. There was a charity out there that'd put in a machine that splits cable from its sleeving which was really laudable, you know, so they could actually get the copper in a much cleaner way but the machine, power isn't great out there. Is it illegal? It probably is illegal. The entire site is, not really meant to be there. People have congregated and built up this massive community. So there isn't any official power. There is power, but it's not official. It's probably not very reliable. And this machine apparently just kept breaking down. But I think it's just faster to burn it, was my feeling. In which case you make more money if you do it quickly. So that's the really big shocking bit, but, there's a lot of other pollution. There was a lot of plastic pollution. You mentioned clothing earlier on as well. If you looked at a piece of ground, there was fabric and plastic all, all through the earth. There's a bigger issue than just e-waste. How that plastic's getting there, I'm not sure. I just, I don't believe it can be local waste. There's just too much of it. There is other charities now that have put in place incentives to collect plastic, and that's been phenomenally successful. So, there is people literally searching out bottles particularly, so plastic bottles. So there is some really good stuff happening out there. You know, they have tried to tackle e-waste. And we noticed that there was a massive reduction in circuit boards themselves on the site, compared to when Carolina was there last. She was there in 2018 and 19, I think. So in that period, there's definitely been a focus on, e-waste. if you take the circuit board out of a TV, the rest of it's still e-waste. It's still part of our electronic waste. And all of the other bits are still ending up there. But again, there is incentives now to take the circuit board and send it to some sort of recycler. And I did, I followed that side of the supply chain too. So that was quite interesting. Very secretive over there. Some of the companies wouldn't talk to us at all. So I'm not entirely sure what's going on. There was a couple of companies. There was a Chinese company. There was actually a British company there as well. They were incredibly secretive. But the Chinese one opened up a little bit more. And they were removing the components from the boards and shipping them back to China, which was interesting. I presume to reuse. One of my early influences in getting into all of this stuff was that, we started to see counterfeit components as a reseller of components, we started to realise back in about 2005, six, that there was a counterfeit component problem and it was predominantly used components. So stuff that had been in a device, maybe had a ten year life already, and then removed from the board, cleaned up and made to look new. Very crudely in the early days, but slowly but surely they got better and better and they're really quite convincing now. A massive part of our job is to make sure we never have counterfeit components in our supply chain. So we only buy from traceable sources and we still put them through a hundred plus point check, microscopes, really detailed checks to make sure we don't ever supply a counterfeit component. So counterfeits has been in my vocabulary for a long time and we've been protecting our clients against counterfeits for forever. So to hear that they were lifting the components off the boards to send back to China, that's what we would call counterfeit is used devices masquerading is new. So that was interesting. And they were, they were quite open that that's what they were doing. So what led me to that was the, the guys in the scrap yard were telling me that if I can get 'em circuit boards, they want to buy them.'cause they, they actually get paid more for scrap circuit boards than I would be able to get in the UK or in Europe. So there must be some sort of incentive for that to happen. So I think it's the, the government has tried to tackle e-waste, albeit just this one little piece of the overall e-waste picture. So the most shocking stuff is still happening, albeit the circuit boards are getting hived off. There's a whole economy happening there from what you're telling me. I mean, you mentioned that they're doing recycling. So walk me through a television leaves the UK ends up in the port of Accra. What happens then? There is a whole cycle to it. So typically it seems to be second hand traders that are acquiring the products from the UK and from Europe. We did see lots from all parts of Europe. We saw devices that you could trace back to different countries, you know, stickers on them. There was lots of Argos stickers, which is a common brand in the UK. On TVs and on devices, so, fairly clear that they'd come from the UK. It seems that somehow we take our stuff to the recycling dump and it somehow gets into the hands of somebody that then exports it and they're exporting it as working used goods, which is legal. Technically it's legal. How they're getting out of our dumps, I'm really not sure. But anyway, they're getting to Ghana and, as I say, I stood out like a sore thumb there, so people thought I was there to sell them e-waste. So people were coming up to me thinking, Oh, you know, I don't know if there's other guys that look like me that are doing that and helping the trade. I'm not sure. But most people assumed that I could help them get used items. And obviously that's not what I was there for. But they were very open. They were telling me how, they could get things in to the country. And lots of them have a guy at the port. There was ways and means of, of getting things through that maybe shouldn't get through. The containers we saw, so we did see some containers arrive. So, one person brings an entire container of mixed goods typically, and there might be all sorts on there from refrigerators to TVs to monitors all kinds of things are in these containers. We saw some being opened and emptied and dispersed, if you like. So people have specialities. So, in the second hand trading area, there's shops of all kinds. And they're selling maybe TVs, fridges. Different guys will specialise in different products. So when a container is opened, there is typically a whole pile of people waiting to buy whatever it is they specialise in. And if, if you are the TV guy, you buy all the TVs in the container. So it's, it's a batch, it's a job a lot if you like. We spoke to some, of the TV buying people and they were buying whatever was on there. If there was 10 TVs on the on board. Maybe two would work, was roughly the numbers we were being told so roughly 20%. Now Ghana's own figures suggest that it's improved significantly and it's, I think they're claiming about 80 percent work. That wasn't my experience. I mean, I only saw a few containers opened, but my experience was that it was still similar to the sort of numbers that Carolina was told back in her first visit. So I think 20 percent roughly that's working. But they do then go through the whole supply chain. So the guys that take the 10 TVs, take the 2 that work, pass the 8 on to a repairer and the repairer will buy them as broken, not working. And fix as many as they can. The ones that can't fix get broken into pieces and there's traders that will keep the circuit boards as spares. There's guys that literally just have hundreds of circuit boards piled up all around them, and they're in a tiny little shed. And, folk will come up with a broken circuit board and say, Hey, have you got this? And they'll literally just filter through them, hunting for that particular circuit board. And if they can find it, they get three or four dollars for it. And the guy can fix a TV. I thought that was quite cool in a way, because at least a TV was getting repaired and getting back into use. And nobody here, nobody in the UK or Europe would do that. So I thought that was, quite a nice element. There was other guys that were literally soldering and trying to fix boards, if there was obviously a blown capacitor or something very obvious. They weren't really testing to find the faulty component, but if they could see it they would try and change that component, which was pretty resourceful too. Broken screens are very common on TVs. Even if they weren't broken before they got to Ghana, if they were in one piece, when they went into that container, there's a good chance they might have a broken screen by the time they get there. So we saw lots of people replacing screens. Now that wasn't so good because they were buying in new screens from China, typically unbranded. And fitting them to, a brand name we would recognise, TV. So that was a little bit crude, because they were taking a brand new screen and literally grinding off the lugs, and, because it wasn't designed to fit into that housing, and then gluing it in to make it appear like a good working TV. So that, that, that wasn't so, so good I think from an environmental point of view. But there was lots of really, really good repairs happening. I saw people rewinding motors. All sorts of stuff, industrial stuff, starter motors for cars and, literally repairing. Properly repairing like I've not seen I've been in the business a long time. When I was really young we had winders literally people that wound motors and wound the copper wire into the motors And we did see some people repairing motors to a really high standard actually again, just in these tiny little workstations. So that was pretty cool. So, anything that creates longevity is a great thing. So, there was lots of surprises. Lots of really nice surprises in amongst what was initially quite a depressing sight. There is some good charity work going on. There is some schools that have been created for young children particularly. There is a sort of private school system out there which most of the people in the slums can't afford. But there was one or two kids that were, beautifully dressed going off to school leaving a house that is literally two meters by two meters and built out of scrap material. But they had a nice little tidy uniform and they were off to school. So there was some of that, not much. But in the charity, there was a school that we went to visit that had, I think, about 70 kids. Three to five year old, kind of kindergarten, and that charity just built four new classrooms in a bigger school for those kids to be able to carry on into, school proper, which is really nice. So there's some good stuff happening, but the estimates of the number of people that live there was between 40,000 and 140,000 living in this slum area. And that's what I was saying, I was really shocked by the sheer scale of it. It's huge. In some cases up to 15 people in a house. Again, a house is two meters by two meters. It's smaller than my garden shed. Yeah. Up to 15 people staying in one house is the most we saw. But in some cases, two or three families staying in one house and having to sleep in shifts. So it's not great. Some people are earning $2 a day roughly. Rent's $13 a month, something like that. They don't really feel like they've got much choice, but to be working in these conditions. So what happens to them if the supply of e-waste, illegal e-waste going there is cut off? That's the bit that I was surprised by. I didn't realise how many people were dependent on it. And that's, really difficult, because I think they would be cut off. Most of the people working in Agbogbloshie itself are from the north of the country, which is predominantly Muslim. So most of the people we met in Agbogoloshie are Muslim people that are from seven or eight hours drive away. They don't live close by. They've come down to earn money to send home. They live on very small farms typically and that's how they try and survive in the north. But it's really difficult to make that profitable. So the younger guys, I mean kids 14, 15 typically are coming down to work to earn some money to send home. Some of the guys we met, Carolina met in 2018 19, same guys, still there. They were maybe 14 or 15 back then, they're now in their 20s. There was guys there 9, 10, 12 years doing the same thing, basically. I think Carolina described it as everything changes, but nothing changes. And breathing in that air Yeah. And it was shocking. I Wanted to really get a sense of what it was all about, and the heat coming from that fire when they're throwing plastic on it was unbearable, it was really tough, and the smoke was horrendous, your eyes are stinging minutes, and these guys are there 24 7 pretty much. And it's right beside houses, the smoke is just billowing right through the houses. Houses are in some cases no further apart than my shoulders. I was literally having to turn sideways to move up through the streets, if you like. It's jam packed. It's absolutely crammed. And I'm guessing, protective gear, PPE isn't a thing there. It was funny, you know, I think day one we met a guy who trains what they call the burners. So the guys that are actually burning. There's a guy that we met who is supposed to be in charge of training them and he talked a great game. He told us how he helps teach them how to use safety equipment and, make sure they're wearing gloves and safety boots and all these sorts of things. And literally about an hour later, he was out burning in flip flops. No protective gear at all, no gloves, nothing. Yeah, there wasn't much safety. Some of the burners were wearing safety boots and, fairly hard wearing jeans. I don't know how they were wearing those in that heat. But an awful lot of the guys working with scrap, I've got images and videos of people chiseling away with, again, flip flops on or sliders, they call them nowadays, don't they? The modern version of sliders. There was lots of Gucci, fake Gucci sliders and things like that kicking around. And what's the connection? I mean, it's pretty obvious, but draw us a line. What's the connection between what you saw in Ghana and the phones, laptops and gadgets we upgrade every couple of years without a second thought? Yeah, so typically older. You know, most of this stuff was older. They, you know, I had my relatively current iPhone with me and I was taking pictures with it and it did attract a bit of attention. When I went to the school the kids swarmed around me and they were playing with my Apple Watch. They just were blown away by that. And, they're so into technology, but the stuff they have is, is typically quite old. And as I was saying, as I was walking through the slum area, every so often you'd hear football or music or something, and you could peer in, and there was areas where they had 10, 12 TVs. There was a chalkboard listing all the Champions League games outside what looked like a pub. It wasn't really a pub, but it kind of looked like a makeshift pub. And people do go and congregate to watch Champions League football. So people don't have TVs in their houses as such, but there is places they can go and do that. There was other little places that had playstations or xboxes where you could go and game and everything's pay as you go. There is a huge economy in there. There was there was streets that we walked through that was just filled with beauticians and hairdressers Oh wow. Didn't expect to see that. So again, small not glamorous necessarily but everything that we would expect to find in the high street did exist there. All on a sort of pay as you go basis. It was quite amazing to see that. There was a, a street we walked through that had multiple tailors. It was kind of like a Agbogbloshie Savile Row. There was people literally making suits. There was a guy that literally had a pattern and was making a suit. So there was all sorts of things going on. You had to pay if you wanted to shower, for example. there was a guy that literally heated up hot water all day in a great big boiler and you could pay and go and get a warm shower if you were wealthy enough. What about access to things like healthcare? Healthcare was interesting. So they do have a card now, so again, three or four years ago they were all given access to healthcare of sorts and they've got a health card. It gets them an initial appointment. Didn't see much signs of people using it. So when we talked to people, they weren't really going to the doctors because they knew ultimately it was going to cost them. So even if you get the initial consultation free, any help you're going to get was going to cost, and they don't have money for that. Again, even inside the slum area, there was things that appeared to look and sound like chemist shops or pharmacies. We actually hired a doctor one day, we brought a doctor along with us to meet the guys in the burning area to see if we could help them in some way, get some access. So we brought a doctor along and spent a day with him, with the guys specifically in the burning area, because we just wanted to get a sense of how they were doing health wise. And there was all kinds of conditions. They were brilliant. The guys in that area were really open and they spoke very freely to the doctor and to Carolina and myself. Yeah, they were very frank and there was all kinds of issues and, diseases and things that they just hadn't had dealt with. They were trusting largely the chemist to prescribe things. But what the doctor explained to us is that these chemists aren't like our chemists or pharmacies. They're not regulated. Anyone can open a chemist shop of sorts and, provide advice and drugs. So, they're not the same that we would expect. They apparently are selling often counterfeit drugs. We had lots of people getting prescribed effectively the same thing, that we would say were placebos. And so they thought they were getting treated for something, but not really effectively. So, yeah, the health care wasn't great. We did spend a bit of time in a, in old Fadama is really the name of the town. There's a midwifery, a clinic. So there's a clinic that was set up and it's theoretically there to advise anyone, but it's predominantly focused on pregnant women and looking after women going through pregnancy and we met quite a pregnant women in the clinic. And that was really interesting to get a sense of what their lives were like and what their healthcare was like. And it was originally again, set up by a charity, fairly new building when Carolina was there in 2019. But falling apart now. Not that much later, the roof was literally rotten. The metal. I don't know how it's in such a state so quickly, but, there was clearly lots of leaks in the roof and the plasterboard was hanging down. It wasn't ideal. It definitely needs some more support. But a lot of the charities go in on a sort of two year project, so they'll go in, they'll do something, they'll set it up. This particular clinics being passed back to the local government. So it's now part of the local hospitals. And we did go and visit some of those as well, just to get a sense of how they were all connected up. We're actually looking for permission to use the footage that we collected there. Which I think we're still waiting on approval for. So, we've not been able to share any of that. And again, that is, that's Carolina's thing is the well being of the people on the ground there. But again, very open. The, midwives and the patients were really open and talked to us about how life was. Generally, people were pretty happy. You know, that was the other slight surprise for me., Whilst, It was really tough to see how they were living, mostly they were as happy as anyone here would be. Just getting on with their lives, making a living, surviving, teaching their kids. It was, it was really quite interesting and quite humbling, they didn't have anything really. But yeah, quite a happy, functioning place. There was a very clear hierarchy. If there was any trouble, we saw a few disagreements, usually over money or over some sort of trade or deal. Somebody would jump on the phone and everybody had phones, again, albeit quite old phones, everybody had phones, but they would jump on the phone to one of the chiefs and there's layers of chiefs and the chief would sort it out, So we got in trouble from somebody because we were filming. We had permission to film but somebody else decided he, he should be getting paid if we're filming. in that area. You know, he wanted money from us and from a journalistic integrity point of view, we didn't want to be paying. We were there to explore and see what was going on and understand and hopefully help, hopefully help in the future. So but everything's so transactional there that people were expecting. Cash, you know, if you want to go to the toilet, if you want to sit down and go to the toilet, you pay for it. In the showers and all those things, everything is transactional and instant. Even if you burn some copper, it's not your copper, somebody brings it to you. They'll bring a pile of wire, they'll pay you to burn it. And then they take away the copper to sell. Everything's so transactional that if we took a photo, somebody was pretty much putting their hand out expecting some sort of payment. And there's been lots of documentary makers there as well. There was some people we met that you could tell it was almost a show. They were kind of putting on a show or wanting to put on a show and they were wanting paid and we tried to avoid that because we didn't want to get some version of, of the truth. We wanted to get a better understanding of what life was really like out there. So we, we tried to avoid that when we could tell somebody was practiced and trying to put on a show. And we saw other documentary makers while we were there too. And some pop in for the afternoon, create a documentary and disappear again. So they're going in and getting a choreographed version of, of what life's like. And I spent two weeks there intentionally because I really wanted to get a sense of it. So we were in there six, seven in the morning some days, all the way till eight, nine at night. Just to really understand what life was like and how people interacted and yeah, it was really interesting. Bizarrely, after two weeks. It felt reasonably comfortable in there. Whereas initially, you know, you were, the ground was moving, you know, the ground we were walking on was moving, it was it was a wetland originally, so, the ground was kind of spongy, it was just filled with waste, you were You know, in some cases knee deep and waste of all sorts. It was quite unpleasant initially, but you do get accustomed to it, strangely. So yeah, by the time two weeks were up, we were sitting in these little makeshift shelters. Shelters from the sun, really. The guys were just sitting, chilling out in between burning, sitting on old motorbike seats. So, motorbike seats lying on the ground, that was a seat. And yeah, after two weeks I'm sitting, chillin with these guys. It's quite strange, quite bizarre. And Kenny, what's, what's the alternative? What's the alternative? It's really difficult because if we cut the supply off properly, you know, we shouldn't be supplying stuff. So if we cut it off properly, lots of people would suffer. And there currently isn't a great alternative. As I say, in the burning area, my original hope was that we could help them recycle properly and safely. And in a way that doesn't harm the environment. That was my initial thought. That would be the first step. And I think it probably still is. Teach them how to do higher level jobs as well. There is a thirst for knowledge. If there was a facility there. that was training people in, in higher level engineering, for example, there's skills there for sure. There's people that, that could even lead and teach, you know, some of the people that are already doing a good job of repairing things some of them are brilliant and really would make great teachers. So if you set up a, a school of some sort, it'd have to be local. It would have to be close. You could be taking people into higher paid work. And, and doing some really good stuff. Because they seem to keep coming back to scrap. I mean, we spoke to some guys that used to work in a hotel, a fairly high end hotel, but they came back to scrap because it was more money. You would think being a porter in a hotel would have paid better than burning metal, but it doesn't, it clearly doesn't. So yeah, I mean, it's a tough existence. It really is. It's a tough existence for these people, but you have to somehow protect the jobs whilst making things better. So it has to be carefully done. The priest I spoke to at the school, the charitable school that was set up, he's been there 14 years. I think he went out on a year's assignment and he's been there 14 years, I'm sure he said. And he, he was lovely, but he said, you have to go slowly. That's difficult for me. I don't really think that way. I want to make an impact and change the world and it has to be slow. It has to be carefully done. You've got to think about the whole big picture. And, change, people don't like change. So anything you do, you've got to get the buy in of the local people. So I think you can make big improvements fairly quickly, on the schooling side, on the cleanliness side. The attitude towards waste is pretty poor. People eat from plastic bags because, there's no way to wash cutlery or, plates or anything. So people tend to put food into a plastic bag and there's more or less squirting it into their mouths and then they just throw the bag away. So there's lots of stuff like that that you could improve. I think you could get the buy in for that, but it would be a massive campaign to change attitudes towards that, and again, it's not their land, they could be moved at any moment. And, and in truth, they were moved a few years ago, so at one point they were on the other side of the river, and that's where all the, recycling happened. It was on the other side of the river, and one day the government came along and just bulldozed it. So everything they owned just got flattened. So they've now moved to the other side of the river, which is right in amongst the houses. So they've effectively pushed back the houses to create a recycling area again by the river. And I suppose like any economy, most of our big cities around the world, they're built on rivers because it's easier to get access, the water is useful, most of our big cities are built on rivers too, but you don't see an awful lot of river and in these rivers, they're a foot or so deep in waste as well. So I've got images of rivers where animals were walking on the river. There was so much waste on it. And not small animals. In some cases, cows walking on the river. And Carolina in her last trip, she spent some time with a guy that was collecting bottles from the river. So he was collecting plastic bottles because there's a monetary value on them now. So he's literally in the river, chest deep. She bravely went in with him to get photos. So she went into the river and she described that. And that was brave. Most of the locals won't go near the river. There's a massive fear of the river. A lot of people die in that river. We spent some time with the fishermen just slightly further down, maybe about two kilometers further down the river. One of the chiefs there in that area said he picks about 15 to 20 people out of the sea every year that he believes have come from this place. He has to take the bodies out and call the police. There is a massive fear of the river. But for Carolina to get down in the river with this guy, to get some photos, she wanted to get a true sense of what it was all about. It wasn't pleasant. There was all kinds of things in there. She was bumping into large objects, that clearly shouldn't be in a river. If manufacturers or tech giants are listening to this, what's one major change they need to make to reduce this problem at the source? If things were more repairable, it would help. They are resourceful. They will repair if it's at all possible. And there has been a lot of talk about making devices more repairable. That would be great. I mean, we welcome that in our economy. The price of a new screen on my phone is almost the price of the phone. it's kind of forced scrap, isn't it, at that, stage. It's got quite silly repair costs three quarters of the price of the phone. And then your glass screen will break, almost certainly, especially when you give it to one of my kids, chances that screen getting broken are pretty high. So make things more repairable would be a great start. We are talking to some, some large electronic manufacturers that are really working hard at that. There's a lot of variance in terms of how seriously people are taking that. But some companies really are working at that now, which is great to see. Stuff shouldn't really be getting there, but as I say, it's going to cut off hundreds of thousands of people's livelihoods, and Ghana's just one place this is happening. This is one of many places that these same things are happening. We know Nigeria next door, a lot of the people we met are moving product back and forth through Nigeria, so it looks and sounds like it's very similar across the border there. So yeah, I'm sure it's happening in lots of countries. It's not one place. Yeah, I mean, I really would be loathe to stop the supply of all goods, but differentiating between true scrap and working goods, if that was done properly, it wouldn't be nearly as bad. You know, in some cases it's an easy repair. You know, we did see cases where a TV was deemed broken, and all the guy had to do was put a plug on it. Not really broken, is it? I see both sides of the story, and it is very complicated. My hope initially was that if we can get some of the big manufacturers, even just helping fund and teach, repair and good, clean recycling, that would be a massive start. You, can't just close the door on it, I don't think. I think that would be very cruel. and for everyone else who's listening who wants to make sure, my old phone or laptop doesn't end up in places like that. What's the best thing we can do? It's really difficult because we, we still don't know quite how it's getting out of what should be a closed loop system. I haven't managed to get to the bottom of that yet. Because it really shouldn't be leaving our shores in the first place. So, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is to that. We've got some tracking devices that we're going to put on some, things soon to see if we can see if they are being disposed of properly. So we're going to continue to do those sort of experiments to see where things end up. If you could put one message about e-waste on every smartphone lock screen for a day, what would it say? That is a great question. I would want to put work into it and I would want my marketers to help me because I'm not the best with words. But, I would just like to see people dispose of things properly. And, you know, if it is working, pass it on to somebody. Even if it's for free, pass it on to somebody who can use it for longer. You know, to see devices that are one, two years old going in the bin, it's horrific to me. Buy quality, keep it longer, pass it on, that sort of stuff. looking back now, Kenny, is there anything that you're doing differently now that you wouldn't have thought about doing before? I'm certainly much more conscious of waste in general. You know, I think I mean, silly things are really bothering me now. You know, things that I wouldn't have really considered before. Waste food, waste everything. You know, plastic particularly. The plastic waste out there was horrendous. The clothing waste. So, you know, we've got these clothing banks in the UK where we can take any old clothing and I've used them a lot I've always thought I was doing good sending stuff to a clothing bank because it does go to places like Ghana But actually a lot of it I mean it you know they do appreciate it in a way and the better stuff will survive and will get a life but there's so much of it going there. That's not really usable. So I suppose it's probably similar to the e-waste that it shouldn't really be going there. The damaged stuff, the torn stuff, the worn out stuff, should really not be going there. But we're sending everything because it's a way to get rid of it. Even when we buy electronic components, we quite often find somebody will give us, you know, we've maybe picked up 70 pallets of stock and they sneaked in a few pallets of absolute-waste that we didn't bid for, buy, or want. If it's a difficult thing to get rid of, if you can sneak it into somebody else's hands, then you've offloaded the problem, but you've just passed it on to somebody else that's even less well prepared to deal with it. So the amount of clothing waste was, was shocking. And, and I genuinely believed when I was putting things into a clothing bank that it was all going to good causes. They should be sending only the good stuff or the only the stuff that's really usable. And it doesn't seem to be that way because there was cloth strewn through. I mean, I've got a picture of a house that was built on top of a mound of earth and it was maybe 20 feet high, this mound of earth, but all through the earth you could see more plastic and more clothing than earth. in this, this mound. It's literally, I don't know how to describe it. It's like a, a viennetta. I don't know if you know what a viennetta ice cream looks like with the layers and layers of chocolate. It's almost like that turned up on its end. So that, that's not good. That's quite sad to see. And the whole place was just filled with plastic and and waste. And it is, it's our stuff, you know, it's, there's no denying where it's come from, Lots of the guys were wearing football tops, football strips that clearly come from a clothing bank somewhere in Europe. That's fine, they're getting use out of that, but there's a whole pile of junk. I mean, you know, a lot of the disposable clothing nowadays that kids seem to buy. The sort of one use clothing, you know, you wash it once and it's ruined already. So, that sort of stuff is in abundance out there and they won't wear it either. If it's out of shape, they're not even going to wear it. So it ends up just clogging up the waterways. Again, the, rivers were just filled to the brim with plastic waste, clothing waste. It's quite shocking. On a more hopeful note, Kenny, is there any one solution or innovation that you've come across that makes you optimistic about the future of e-waste and circularity in electronics? Like I say, I mean, we're speaking to lots of very large companies and some are genuinely trying to make things better. We were talking to Siemens recently. Even their big industrial equipment, they're thinking, can we reuse the housing at least? Your technology moves on. We've always got to improve it. We're looking for efficiency gains and, speed gains and production and factories. And they're now thinking, you know, the standard was to redesign the entire thing from the ground up. But they're actually now thinking and looking at, that housing, whilst we could change it, there's no need to change it, it's fine, it's the right shape, it does the job, we could just put the new tech into, into an existing housing, so why remake it, why don't we just make it replaceable tech, so the tech's replaced, but the, the housing, the equipment that it's, contained in is the same, and that's a great way to think, that we really need to replace absolutely everything all the time. It's difficult. I mean, the chip makers, we've been talking to some of the chip makers themselves about components because they want to make more components so that they don't really encourage the redistribution that we do. In fact, some of them really strongly discourage it. They would like to claim that, it's inferior in some way. I mean, the stuff we deal with is brand new, it's in its original package, and sometimes it left the factory two weeks ago. It's obsolete before it's even been delivered, because they've already redesigned it, but they committed to it a year ago. A brand new product, but they would like to discredit it because they want to make more because the shareholders want to make more money and it's the way of the world at the moment, isn't it? So that's a challenge that's really hard to break. And we're talking to the chip makers because we understand they have some concerns about redistributed stock. So pricing isn't as simple as you would imagine on a chip. If you're buying a hundred pieces of a chip, it's going to be infinitely more expensive than if you're Samsung or Apple and you're buying hundreds of thousands a month, Yeah, you know, understandably, right? So the price differential is enormous and there has been examples. There's been well documented examples of people buying at the hundreds of thousands a month price and shipping it out the side door to other people. You can understand the chip makers would be adverse to that, you know, that's not correct. It is certainly against the contract. So there is examples of that type of behavior. And that's what they're trying to clamp down on, really. Not necessarily redistribution. So we shouldn't tar everybody with the same brush. We've got to, look at things on their merit. So we would love to become the, the authorised redistributor of components for some of the chip makers so that we can give them the, the, open book, clarity and transparency on where it came from, where it's going to, so that they know there's no underhanded double trading going on, you know, so we could give them that clarity very easily. So I think we could address some of that and I hope that they'll buy into it. Certainly most of them, we were at a show in Munich recently and most of them are talking about sustainability a lot and it's plastered all over their stands. If they're really genuinely interested in sustainability, then they'll certainly want to talk to us. So hopefully it's happening. Hopefully it's coming. But we did, struggle. I mean, we had conversations. There was a big forum where the chip makers were discussing on a sort of round table all kinds of things, but sustainability was brought up and they did struggle. Chips aren't the most, environmentally friendly items. You're drawing an awful lot of elements out of the ground. You're combining them with lots of power and heat. And they're not brilliant, but the best most could manage was saying that the technology helps other people be more sustainable. And there's truth in that, but, they ultimately need to look at their own backyard as well and see what they can do. And certainly redistributing brand new chips makes a lot of sense. We hear horror stories of literally millions of dollars worth of brand new chips getting crushed and just going back into the-waste cycle. And okay, they'll, reclaim the copper, they'll reclaim the gold. But that's a tiny fraction of the value and resources that have gone into that device. It's better to reclaim something than nothing, but it's a tiny fraction of the value that's gone creating that chip in the first place, so. I would love to see them actively supporting us in redistributing brand new traceable parts. It's a no brainer to me. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Kenny, is there any question I haven't asked that you wish I had, or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of? I think we've covered everything I can think of. The biggest thing about going to Ghana for me was, the signs of hope. There is lots of hope there. There's lots of good people doing good things. And a bit of help and a bit of encouragement from the the wider electronics manufacturing community would be awesome, be absolutely brilliant. So I mean, I'm not looking to create a charity, but if I can bring some of these guys to the party, that would be great. We can help other charities that already exist. There's some great people doing great things. And they just need a bit of help. Kenny, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them? Our company website, ComponentSense. com, my LinkedIn page, Kenny McGee. I'm on social media in various forms as well. The Common Sense CEO. If you Google that you would probably find me. And I'm sure we can post some, other directions. Shoot me some links and I'll put them in the show notes and that way everyone has access to them. Cool. Okay. Kenny, that's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. Thank you very much. Thanks Tom. Okay. Thank you all for tuning into this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Each week, thousands of supply chain professionals listen to this show. If you or your organization want to connect with this dedicated audience, consider becoming a sponsor. You can opt for exclusive episode branding where you choose the guests or a personalized 30 second ad roll. It's a unique opportunity to reach industry experts and influencers. For more details, hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn, or drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com. Together, let's shape the future of sustainable supply chains. Thanks. Catch you all next time.