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A team of researchers, led by University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) Assistant Research Scientist Brandon Marc Finn, examined a settlement near one of the world's largest informal e-waste sites in Accra, Ghana. The settlement, called Agbogbloshie, is home to what Finn calls the "informal paradox," or the unregulated recycling work done by e-waste workers, which compromises their health and the city's environment. 

Dimitris Gounaridis, SEAS assistant research scientist and lecturer, is a geospatial data scientist who contributed to the study by helping to understand the scale of the challenges in and around Agbogbloshie. He examined the relationship between the growing population in the settlement and air pollution as represented by fine, inhalable particles in the air, called PM 2.5. which, in the region, largely comes from the open burning of plastics.

“We have these long-term unequivocally dangerous social and environmental outcomes, but the paradox is that people are using this as perhaps the only way to earn money, or the only way to actually pursue upward socioeconomic mobility,” Finn said. “If circular economies rely on exploitation and exposure to toxicity, as our research shows, they cannot be assumed to be sustainable. We need minerals for the energy transition, but the integrity of their supply chains is just as important as the outcome of clean energy itself.”

Finn added that their study, published in the journal Urban Sustainability, raises questions about how to regulate informal economies and settlements across the Global South without alienating people from their housing and livelihoods. He suggests a "middle ground" strategy to mitigate harms while providing financial and technical support and reducing environmental pollution, and still allowing people to create livelihoods, among other recommendations. 

“Interventions into the informal paradox, in Ghana and more broadly, are desperately needed,” Finn said. “However, the nature of these interventions is uncertain, and there are very real risks that policies that fail to understand these contexts and challenges worsen the outcomes for some of the world’s most vulnerable people.”

The other member of the research team was University of Melbourne professor Patrick Cobbinah. 

Read the full press release on the Michigan News website.

Study: The Informal Paradox: Electronic waste and the toxic circular economy in Ghana (DOI: 10.1038/s42949-025-00299-5)