Global Us: What connects us all

Thousands of tons of discarded electrical goods end up in Ghana's capital Accra every year. The German development agency GIZ is helping with the recycling – in an effort to reduce the impact on workers’ health at the waste dump.

A car battery plant in the Belarusian city of Brest has fueled protests. Activists are warning about the impact of highly toxic lead.

"Slash and burn" agriculture involves lighting fires to clear land. It's been practiced for generations in Belize. The method makes the soil more fertile for a short time, but it also releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In Siberia there is growing hostility towards China: illegal loggers are destroying the region's forests and selling timber to China. Demonstrations are taking place in Omsk in protest at plans to build housing for some 3,000 Chinese workers.

In rural Kenya, many people are off the grid, cooking over open fires. A project to provide smallholder farmers with a biogas plant they feed with manure enables them to switch to methane, which burns cleanly.

Making amends for environmental destruction. Colombian gas provider Promigas is funding conservation projects to compensate for the damage done by its pipelines. The beneficiary is the Los Colorados wildlife sanctuary in the north of Colombia.

A boarding school in the state of Jodhpur is helping to empower child brides through education. Child marriages are common in India, despite being illegal. The school project is called Veerni, which means “woman of strength” or “heroine”.

An urban farming project is securing food sources for thousands of poor people in Quito – by providing access to gardens. Participants currently grow over 900 tons of produce for consumption and sale. The gardens are also good for the climate.

The European appetite for chicken begins and ends with the bird’s breast. Other parts are chopped up, frozen and shipped abroad – often to Africa. Poultry imports subsidized by the EU are ruining the market for African farmers.

The Bavarian town of Altötting has long claimed to have the region's purest water. Nowadays many people think twice about consuming the water here. Studies have shown it's contaminated with perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA, which might cause cancer.