Ghana Has a New E-Waste Law - Will Scrap Workers Become Partners or Casualties?

When a refrigerator stops cooling in a Ghanaian home, its next destination is rarely a formal waste depot. The owner may first call a repairer. If a replacement part can restore the machine, it returns to service. If the repair is too expensive, a collector buys it or carries it away. Reusable components enter other appliances. The remaining metals and plastics move through dismantlers and materials traders. What nobody can sell becomes waste.

Before that refrigerator appears in any official record, it may have supported several livelihoods. Its journey captures Ghana’s electronic-waste problem more honestly than a photograph of a scrapyard. It contains skill and enterprise. It also contains unsafe work, inadequate infrastructure and pollution that Ghana cannot accept. The policy task is not to destroy this chain. It is to make the chain safer and traceable, while rewarding the people who recover value from what society discards.

Ghana now has a law capable of supporting that transition. The harder question is whether implementation will treat existing workers as partners or casualties.

A new law, not yet a new system
The Environmental Protection Act, 2025 (Act 1124) was gazetted on 6 January 2025. It consolidated Ghana’s principal environmental laws and established the Environmental Protection Authority in place of the Environmental Protection Agency. Its remit includes hazardous waste, electronic waste and climate-change coordination. This is not a reform waiting to happen. It is established law.

Act 1124 also reinstated the Electrical and Electronic Waste Management Fund within the new framework. The Fund previously existed under the repealed Hazardous and Electronic Waste Control and Management Act, 2016. The new Act retained the advance eco-levy on specified electrical and electronic equipment. Manufacturers and importers covered by the law are required to register with the Authority. They must obtain permits and pay the prescribed levy, according to a 2025 legal analysis of the Act.

The financing mechanism therefore exists. The E-Waste Fund’s stated mandate includes supporting collection and recycling infrastructure. It can also finance training, research and incentives for responsible disposal.

But legislation is the scaffolding, not the building. A levy does not collect a broken television from a household. A permit does not provide a dismantler with safer equipment. A fund does not become environmental progress until its money produces visible services.

The collectors are already there
Ghana does not need to invent an e-waste collection workforce. It already has one. The European Commission’s overview of the E-MAGIN Ghana programme states that electronic waste is handled predominantly by informal businesses. These operators serve as the main collectors and provide employment to thousands of people. The programme itself sought to formalise informal enterprises through training and an organised collection mechanism—not to eliminate them from the market.

The network extends beyond the person pushing a cart. It includes repairers and transporters. It also includes dismantlers, component traders and scrap dealers. A GIZ study of Ghana’s recycling chain documented these connected roles and argued for safer income opportunities that would not simply edge existing workers out of the industry.

The size of this economy is difficult to measure. In 2023, UNDP Ghana cited an older research estimate suggesting that e-waste activities supported at least 200,000 livelihoods and generated between US$105 million and US$268 million annually. Those figures are not a current labour census and should not be presented as one. They nevertheless indicate that e-waste policy affects far more people than those working at the most visible scrapyards.

Informal work should not be confused with useless work. Collectors know where retired appliances are found. Repairers understand which products can be saved. Traders already connect recovered materials to buyers. These capabilities are economic assets, even when the conditions under which people work need urgent improvement.

Across African countries, less than one per cent of e-waste was documented as formally recycled in 2022, according to the Global E-waste Monitor 2024. That is a regional figure, not Ghana’s recycling rate. Still, it illustrates the danger of assuming that anything outside formal records has simply disappeared. Much of it is moving through networks that official policy does not yet see clearly.

Enforcement without infrastructure
Unsafe processing must end. Ghana cannot excuse practices that contaminate communities or expose workers to hazardous substances. Yet enforcement alone cannot create a functioning alternative. If a collector is told to use an authorised centre, that centre must be reasonably close. It must accept the material the collector carries. Its payment must cover the value of the item and the cost of transporting it. Otherwise, enforcement may merely move unsafe activity from one location to another. It may also transfer the most profitable materials to a few licensed firms while leaving existing workers without an income.

Formalisation should therefore be understood as a service agreement between the state and the worker. The worker accepts registration, traceability rules and safer methods. In return, the system provides training and accessible infrastructure. It also offers a dependable route to sell recovered materials.

Registration that provides no economic benefit will be treated as paperwork. A permit that raises costs without opening a market will encourage avoidance. Ghana must make compliance more practical than operating outside the system.

The Authority should distinguish between a harmful practice and the person performing it. Prohibit the unsafe method, but give the worker a realistic path into safer employment. Livelihood extinction should not be disguised as environmental enforcement.

Repair belongs at the centre
E-waste policy often moves too quickly from collection to recycling. Between those stages lies a better option: keeping the product in use. A repaired phone does not yet require recycling. Neither does a refurbished computer or refrigerator. Repair postpones waste and reduces the immediate demand for replacement products. It also preserves more of an appliance’s value than breaking it down solely for raw materials.

The Global E-waste Monitor identifies limited repair options and shorter product lives among the forces driving the worldwide waste increase. Ghana’s repair economy should therefore be treated as environmental infrastructure.

A practical certification system could help customers identify trained repairers. Standard written guarantees would build confidence in repaired products. Clear spare-parts standards could discourage the sale of components that fail quickly or cannot be fitted safely.

Government can also create demand. Where performance and security requirements permit, public institutions could purchase professionally refurbished computers and other equipment. Procurement rules would need quality standards and warranties. Done properly, such a policy would support local technical work while extending product life.

Ghana should count successful repair as waste prevented. Tonnes recycled matter, but so do appliances that never entered the waste stream.

Follow the eco-levy
The E-Waste Fund is where legal ambition meets public money. In April 2025, the acting manager of the Fund told the Daily Graphic that it had accrued more than GH¢60 million. He said disbursement had begun and that the 20 per cent allocation intended to support collection centres was being used. That point-in-time disclosure was useful. It was not a substitute for a clear annual account.

How much has been collected since then? How much has been disbursed? Which organisations received the money, and what did they deliver?

At the time of writing, the Fund’s public website lists collection-centre operators in Accra and Kumasi. It also lists operators in Koforidua and Tamale. The page may not represent every functioning collection point. That uncertainty is itself a reason for better reporting.

A household needs to know where the nearest centre is. A collector needs opening hours and accepted product categories. Payment terms must also be public. Without such information, national coverage exists more clearly in policy language than in daily life. The Fund should publish an annual accountability report showing total receipts and disbursements. It should identify the facilities supported and the tonnes collected through funded programmes. Regional coverage and the number of workers trained should also be disclosed.

The report should distinguish between money allocated and work completed. Its results should be independently verified. Citizens must be able to determine whether the levy is operating as environmental finance or merely as another cost attached to electrical equipment.

Building an inclusive national system
An inclusive model can begin with a simple worker registry designed with scrap-dealer and repairer associations. Registration should be inexpensive and available through local authorities. It should lead to contracts or commercial opportunities, rather than becoming another reason to impose penalties.

Registered collectors could deliver equipment to municipal collection centres and receive digital receipts. Each item would be weighed and categorised. Payment would follow a published formula that reflects recoverable value and the additional cost of safe treatment.

Predictable does not have to mean permanently fixed. Prices can be reviewed as material markets change. What matters is that workers understand how payment is calculated and are not forced to negotiate from a position of desperation.

From the collection centre, each batch should be traceable to an authorised processor. This would give the Authority useful national data without expecting individual scrap workers to finance the environmental service from already narrow margins.

Training must lead to material improvements at work. Registered operators should gain access to appropriate equipment and designated dismantling spaces. The system should also connect workers to National Health Insurance Scheme enrolment and suitable pension arrangements.

Worker cooperatives could help smaller collectors negotiate contracts and share transport. Participation should remain accessible to independent workers who are not members of established associations. Formalisation must not create new gatekeepers.

Act 1124 gives Ghana the legal tools to build this system. The eco-levy gives it a source of finance. The country’s collectors and repairers bring the practical knowledge.

Success will not be measured by how many informal workers disappear from view. It will be measured by whether more appliances are repaired and more materials enter safe channels. It will also be measured by whether workers can earn a living without carrying the environmental cost on their bodies and communities.

If the journey of that broken refrigerator ends at an accessible collection centre, with the collector paid fairly and the materials properly traced, the law will have built something real. If it ends with the worker displaced and the waste pushed elsewhere, Ghana will have changed the institution’s name without changing the system.

Every cedi collected should be traceable to cleaner recovery, safer work or reduced waste.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alhassan Ibn Abdallah is an electronic-waste entrepreneur and sustainability advocate. He holds an MSc in Energy and Sustainable Management from KNUST and is pursuing an MSc in Economics with Informatics at GCTU. His work promotes safer resource recovery, climate innovation and a just energy transition. He advocates a circular economy that includes informal workers in environmental reform.