Abstract

Africa suffers from the following serious problems: (i) the distribution of desertification vulnerability suggests that every country is prone to environmental desertification, and desertification processes currently affect about 46% of the total land area; (ii) the Basel Convention is an international agreement that regulates cross-border shipments of toxic waste, but this tight regulation for prohibiting export of end-of-life electronic devices (so-called e-waste) to the third world has resulted in an increase in illegal transport to Africa. The present research is intended to conduct a technical pre-feasibility study in order to tackle the above-mentioned problems. About 80% of e-waste comes from television sets and computers, and cathode ray tubes (CRTs) correspond to about 2/3 of the total weight ? the neck and funnel parts of CRTs contain toxic materials. The manufacture of foam glasses is considered as safe CRT treatment. The control of soil water is significant to cultivate plants the desert, and the waste-based foam particles can improve water retention in arid soils; i.e. a key proposal is the production of soil amendment from CRT glass. The water-use efficiencies of this amendment’s layer are higher than those of the control. Furthermore, leaching fractions of heavy metals from the produced foam glass amendment are lower than the statutory limits.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.