The tragic cost of e-waste and new efforts to recycle

We think a lot about where products come from when we buy them, less so about where they go when we're finished. When we throw things away, this is "away": mountains of garbage across acres of land, with tens of thousands of people sifting through it, in places like the African nation of Ghana.

It is not the kind of image we see in the glossy advertisements enticing us to buy a new cell phone, laptop or TV, but they should be part of the picture, because this is where many of our electronics wind up.

It's also home for Mohammed Awal, who supports his mother and four kids by working, despite the risks of injury, in this city of waste in Ghana's capital, Accra. This dangerous, difficult and dirty work is called "urban mining" – extracting something usable (like copper wiring) from the world's discarded electronics.