Tema is the harbour of Accra. It is build in the the 60ies 40 km outside the city as a new town. The port is heavily guarded and not open to the public. There is one entrance for traffic coming in, six exits spread over 12 docks to move goods out. We were invited to enter the harbour for a tour to the inspection section on the docks by the Ghanaian Environmental Inspection agency (EPA). We want to see the harbor because secondhand car parts come a shore here. This is the first step in their way to SUAME MAGAZINE.

The inspectors gave us some reflector jackets and we were transported into the crowded harbour of old trucks, containers and lots of cars. Behind this scenery giant boats and crane’s drop their shadows over the docks. We stepped out in a yard surrounded with walls of containers. Some containers were opened and the intestines were spread out all over the ground: TV sets, fridges, bikes, stereo’s, stretchers, couches, you name it! Between the stuff laying on the ground labourers and customs employees were emptying the containers and tagging all the products with markers. There were also some guys shouting at the labourers. Our guide told us these guys were the owners of the containers. The game is weather the product is useless or not. A marked product means it will be taken out of business.

The worst environmental damage of second-hand products is caused by fridges and TV sets. The fridges contain toxic gases and the isolation material is useless when the cooling system breaks down. TV sets contain toxic gas as well and glass witch is a direct damage to the environment because of the broken glass. Ghana has no proper recycling industry for this type of waste. The EPA tries to stop these particular goods. Carparts are no priority. They will be usable and won’t bring any damage to the enviroment.

There is no way to stop the second hand products coming into Africa. There is simply to much coming this way. The traders have a simple strategy. They stuff as much second hand products as possible into containers and ship it to Ghana. When it enters the harbor the authorities have a very short time and manpower to control the tsunami of containers coming into the country. Even when they catch a container filled with old fridges, TV sets and printers they can’t really prove the fact that it’s waste instead of a usefull product.