11-year old Emmanuel Osei works as a scrap collector in Ghana, scavenging metal from the corpses of Western computers, televisions and other end-of-life electronic products that have been dumped in West Africa. His goal is to salvage the odd gram of useful metals such as copper, which he can resell for a few cents. To isolate those metals he and his fellow rubbish-pickers have to burn away the useless plastics in the insulation tubes and circuit boards. Black clouds rise above the scrap heaps from the fires – a toxic mist that boys like Emmanuel constantly breathe in. Sometimes, to make the fires more effective, rubber car tyres are thrown on to the flames - adding some new ingredients to the toxic cocktail.

The work on the dumps is hard and unsophisticated. At Agbobloshie in Ghana's capital, Accra, for example, old computer screens are smashed to pieces up by boys using rocks. The ground was a carpet of broken glass. The air stuck in your throat.

Campaigners warn that this is where your computer could end up if you don’t dispose of it properly. The trade is speeding up as we in the West continually upgrade our hardware. Hundreds of tons of E-waste is now said to be arriving in West Africa every month. A group from the Austrian NGO Südwind has been in West Africa to investigate the trade.