In Agbogbloshie, the untrained eye would almost certainly miss Green Advocacy Ghana’s recycling facility.

They would likely be distracted by the loads and loads of garbage that span as far as the eye can see or the smell that consumes your nose in its distinct acidity.

But tucked behind concrete walls that jut out of the ground and don’t really lead anywhere left or right, behind a green shipping container filled with e-waste and another mound of mesh sacks filled to the brim with recycled cables, is the seven-person operation that provides an outlet for the once incredibly toxic and dangerous work environment in Agbogbloshie, where today workers sell their cables safely, and ultimately profitably.

“On the low side, nine to ten in a day,” said Seth Agyekum, when speaking about the amount of workers that bring cables into their facility every day.

Agyekum, who is originally an accountant by trade, manages the facility and the half a dozen employees that work for GreenAd at their Agbogbloshie facility.

Scrap workers can bring different types of cables into the facility and be paid via a mobile cash app. Copper cables are the most valuable, followed by aluminum and then other lower-grade cables.

Before Agbogbloshie made international headlines in 2019 for being one of the world’s largest e-waste dump sites and having extremely high levels of toxic lead in its soil, even before GreenAd opened up this facility in 2014 and before international shipping vessels brought their waste to Ghana’s shore beginning three decades ago, Agbogbloshie was just a marshland.

Today, the nearly 30 hectares of marshland just east of downtown Accra bears many reminders of the swampy land it once was. Birds fly and flock over the garbage, searching for food baking in the afternoon sun. Cattle can be seen grazing the land, often consumed with disease, scouring for some bare spots of hay.

Cattle graze over the spots of hay and grass in Agbogbloshie. (Photo by Yannick Peterhans)

Beyond this bare landscape and across a river sitting still with garbage is an active marketplace where just like GreenAd’s facility, goods are exchanged for the service of searching and collecting another man’s trash.

Within this marketplace, a man is offloading a metal cart stacked five feet high with the plastic shells of computers, air conditioning units, and other appliances. This man did not give his name but spoke about being new to the market and looking to make some money off of his find.

Issah Abdulai, one of the employees at GreenAd, looks for men like this.

Abdulai used to be a worker just like him, but was hired on at GreenAd largely because of his experience as a former collector, burner, and dismantler of goods.

Abdulai took down the man’s phone number and forwarded it to Agyekum, saying he will be in touch. GreenAd will also recycle the plastic shells of old appliances and actively looks for new people that are selling their goods on the market.

Bennett Akuffo, the project manager for all of GreenAd in Ghana, spoke of the value that people like Abdulai have to GreenAd, and how they need people that understand the informal sector to be able to smoothly run the recycling facility.

Issah Abdulai speaks with merchants on the market. (Photo by Yannick Peterhans)

“We need to always involve the informal sector,” Akuffo said.

When speaking about Abdulai, Akuffo said: “He’s our liaison because he speaks English, he’s a bit educated, and he understands why we are doing this…and we are all hoping he will go even higher.”

Back at GreenAd’s facility, another team is cutting the charging heads off the cables, so they can then be weighed, and the client can get paid.

Agyekum spoke of some clients that are like this, who have built up trust and a business around GreenAd and will drop off their cables, so they can be cut and weighed at the facility.

It is tedious yet fast-paced work. Workers sporting gloves and a wire cutter in their right hand swiftly sort through the bird’s nest of cables, finding the ends, and making sharp cuts before the cables can be weighed. Today’s lot weighed nearly 60 pounds and will yield about 420 Cedis, or $35.

Two employees at GreenAd’s facility empty a bag of cables to be sorted and weighed. (Photo by Yannick Peterhans)

The facility has been running in the same location since it first opened in 2014 with the help of the German investment bank KFW and the Ghana Ministry of Environment. It is with the collaboration of these two agencies that GreenAd can ensure that both their employees will be paid and the workers that come can be paid a fair market price.

Without their support, GreenAd would not be able to do the work they do.

Akuffo hopes that the operation will continue to stay running over the coming years, and provide an outlet for the workers that are looking to make a living.

For as long as there is garbage at Agbogbloshie, workers will be there to collect and try to sell it.