Full transcript of “Dandora: A Fast Tech story”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:06 Fast tech, the dark side of our digital dependence. A system built on over production and fueled by overconsumption. We buy, we use, we throw away. Sometimes because a device breaks, but often simply because it's deemed too old. Throwaway culture pushes us to constantly upgrade faster, more often. Behind the marketing promises, planned obsolescence takes hold. Devices designed not to last and hard to prepare. Our fast tech model comes at a cost. The waste doesn't disappear. It piles up, leaving environmental damage, health risks, and a soaring carbon footprint. In some countries, like Kenya, where we recently visited, this impact becomes dramatic. There, most electronic
0:54 devices end up in open air dumps. Only about 1% are recycled. The rest pollutes and poisons. Once consumed and discarded, electronics, clothing, phones often end up here. A massive open air landfill, larger than 25 football fields, bordered by a slum where some of its workers live. Each morning, waste pickers arrive to search for anything that can still be sold. At dawn, as trucks dump their loads, the search begins. Pickers looking for electronics and metals,
1:42 treasures far more valuable than ordinary trash. A smartphone contains over 50 different metals. Many waste pickers focus on extracting valuable ones like copper, often without proper tools or protection, putting their health and the environment at serious risk. My name is Jordon and I work at Back Market, a company specializing in refurbished electronics, advocating for a more responsible digital world. Today in Dandora, I've come to confront fast tech with its own reality, to witness the damage and meet those who endure it. Among them is Solomon, a waste picker since his teens, who walks the sea of waste daily. Doradam site is the largest in East Africa with more than 8,000 workers.
2:30 Most of the waste pickers here look most for metals and the electronic waste. I always collect the garbage, then remove the plastics with the nylons, with the electronics, then I go and sell them, so that at least I can get something to be to sustain myself. So this is one of our colleagues. He has collected everything in general. This is where we get the mixture of e-waste and other valuables like plastic, soles, aluminium and other materials.
3:16 For example, the owner of this has been collecting within the dump site like bringing together then now it's time to sell. Now they burn it. They're burning the cable so that they can get the the copper wires, so that you can get the most valuable thing you want. This is the leftover. This is valuable but you don't get it easily. It is very toxic and you can see most of the people not most like all of them are working without protective gears. Yeah. No mask, no mask, no anything. Are endangering their lives. Higher percentage of people are suffering from cancer and TB and other respiratory which are caused by the electronic waste. E-waste is
4:07 not just regular trash. It's toxic waste. It makes up less than 5% of landfill mass but causes over 70% of global waste toxicity. Informal recycling releases 1,000 plus toxic chemicals like lead and mercury, polluting air, soil, dust, and water. These toxins travel far, affecting even distant populations. Children and pregnant women are most at risk with millions exposed worldwide, according to the WHO. When it comes to laptops, when they come to Kenya as waste, they are normally taken by people who have learned how to to repair and they go back to the to the market, but they are not sustainable. Even the copper wires after they are being burnt and
4:57 sold to middlemen or aggregators, they are being exported back. So they know what they are doing. We will just throw them in Africa. They will do the work for us, and then they will come back as materials, and that is how it is. The Basil Convention prohibits the export of electronic waste, classified as hazardous due to its dangerous handling. Yet the rules are poorly enforced. Rebranded as secondhand, irreparable devices cross borders, ending up in dumps at the expense of local populations. But not all of it comes from the West. A large portion of the waste originates from Kenyan consumption itself. Due to the lack of proper collection systems, old computers and phones end up in household trash and inevitably in Dandora.
6:11 I am honestly really overwhelmed. There is a very clear learning that has come to me that there are giant corporations with a tremendous amount of e-waste. There's no legislation, and the people who are paying the price, surprise surprise, are the poor people. And I'm left with this feeling of powerlessness, wondering what we can do to change it, and still understanding and acknowledging that if someone's going to do something, it has to be the government, it has to be a company. This is Ngara, your market. When we collect all things,
6:59 we come here and do the repairs. There is like 800 people here. We're working at this place. At Ngara Market, collectors and repairers come together to give household appliances a second life. Broken machines recovered from dumps or collection points are taken apart. Materials are sorted and valuable components resold to companies like WEEE Centre, a pioneer in e-waste management in Kenya. This is my small kingdom, and when I collect my my goods, I come I give my boys they clean up, and then we take the motherboards to e-waste. The rest that are functioning, we need supply to people. Where are you collecting the goods from? The goods we collect from centers,
7:47 from schools, from dumping sites, we are trying to to clean the environment. When they make and it cannot be repaired, beyond the repair, they call us and we collect. So when we collect, we come and remove the the inner part. When we take this inner motherboards, we collect them and then we take it to WEEE Centre. Do you have an idea of once you have one or or two of these motherboards, how much of it is actually able to be recycled and how much of it just goes to waste? If I take this motherboard, 90% is the one that is going to be recycled. 90%. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Disarticulating my motherboards, making them to be clean. That's what I'm doing.
8:35 This is a like CPU motherboard. So when I go and sell them to like WEEE Centre, I'm separating some magnesium. We have brass and we have copper. Yeah. Once sorted, Francis can sell metals individually based on market rates. Copper found in motors and motherboards is among the most valuable. But Francis isn't just a collector. He's also a repair man. Thanks to spare parts salvaged from the landfill or bought from broken devices, he brings appliances back to life. Once repaired, they're resold at a fraction of the price of a new product.
9:23 This is how the circular economy works here. Nothing is wasted. Everything is transformed. I'm really blown away and impressed by a lot of this, because it looks like you're
10:08 taking technology that would be in the way site, but you're giving it a whole new life and you're making it more accessible to poor people and people who just need technology. We are proud of because each and everyone of us we are trying to help us with the small thing we get
10:56 so that our life we can move on. I can be happy if we can be able to get now these things instead of throwing them away we can repair it and maybe somebody can use it for in future. This informal economy helps reduce the country's e-waste while supporting the livelihoods of many families, but it runs without regulation. Nothing is traceable. No one knows what's truly recycled and the methods burning cables, acid baths, toxic fumes are poisoning workers in the environment alike. That's where the WEEE Centre steps in to train, equip, and document. Not to eliminate the informal sector,
11:44 but to support it. Teaching safe sorting practices, tracking material flows, proving what is actually recycled. In short, turning well-meaning chaos into a truly circular economy, clean, transparent, and sustainable. Eventually, everything dies. You need a resting place. So, that's what we created by the WEEE Centre, which its mandate is to create a safe environment for all dead electronic equipments and also safeguarding our environment. Here, materials are sorted and separated safely without risking health through harmful practices like open air cable burning. At their facilities, used electronics are tested and rebuilt to create new devices.
12:31 Some of these devices are used by students across the country, learning basic computer skills, office software, and responsible e-waste management. When you look at the digit track here, it's more than just a mobile classroom. It's a symbol of hope. We would like to see that the kids that have come here um have been able to like open their own businesses online. We want them to be included in this digital age. The WEEE Centre also supports local entrepreneurs committed to the circular economy and environmental causes. Like Francis, the one that we met the other time, you can see like Francis has been able to really grow his business, employ more youths. So I think that's quite inspiring. Education plays a key role at every level. First by training workers in safe,
13:22 effective techniques. Then by equipping future generations, and turning Second Life electronics into powerful learning tool. And finally by raising awareness because knowledge isn't just power, it's the first step toward lasting change. Currently Kenya produces about 51.3 metric tons of e-waste every year. 1% in Kenya that is being recycled alone. Only 1%. Circularity is the right way to go. Circularity means that if we are able to rethink, remanufacture, redesign how we produce certain electronic equipments, we might be able to actually make it a little bit more sustainable in
14:08 the future. The next generation is eager to unlock local solutions like fixers, a project that offers educational programs in e-waste management, repair and refurbishment through an online platform in university based clubs. Today on our trip together and had some very interesting conversations on how we can add value to the whole chain, and be useful. Or we can increase the efficiency of already existing systems, to benefit those who are disadvantaged by the problem of waste. So having a problem is not discarding a device. It's just a new opportunity to make another device or even a better device. Fast tech in its throwaway culture, here and everywhere, is not sustainable.
14:55 It's urgent to slow down this frantic pace whose impact on our planet and societies is already catastrophic. But there are solutions at every level. Individually by extending the life of our devices, giving, repairing, reselling, or choosing refurbished over new. Keeping our electronics in circulation for as long as possible, legislatively, by defending the right to repair and demanding that manufacturers design products made to last, dismantle, repable, and meant to be passed on, not discarded. Companies that are producing waste, they are reducing problems to them and
15:41 creating problems to us, and that is how it is. They should come up with new ways of making the electronic waste to a point that when they die like the laptops, they're just going the way they are to their producers. Collectively, when reuse is no longer possible by ensuring a responsible end of life process, that responsibility can no longer rest solely on consumers. Brands too must take accountability for what happens after, even when their products cross our borders. All of us play a big part in this. It's a global challenge, and I think it's also for all of us again to partner together and see the mess that we all created how we are able to resolve it.
