Digital dumps

Each month, hundreds of thousands of used computers, televisions and other electronic components -- about 500 container loads -- arrive in Nigeria.

Some of them were donated by people who thought they were helping satisfy the rapidly growing appetite for modern technology in a developing country where few can afford it. And some of them came from individuals or organizations that simply wanted to get rid of their obsolete equipment at the lowest cost.

Either way, at least half of the used equipment that arrives in Lagos by the ton is unusable and ends up in landfills, a Seattle-based nonprofit discovered recently after sending a team to survey the situation. The Basel Action Network (BAN) found that much of the junked equipment is adding to the considerable hazardous waste problems of a country that lacks facilities to properly handle it.

"There's an amazing expertise in repair, but so much of what's coming in is worthless that it is just dumped," said BAN's executive director, Jim Puckett. Photos taken by the group show enormous piles of junked electronics in wetlands, along roadsides, and burning in uncontained landfills that are routinely set ablaze to reduce bulk. These open dumps are often in cities and in residential neighborhoods. The pictures show children wandering near smoldering piles of computer and television parts.