Get Guardian on GoogleA US-based public health researcher and environmental compliance specialist on building a practical, data-driven system so American cities, health departments, and recyclers can handle electronic waste more safely, more consistently, and with more material recovered.
Sodiq Abiola Omotosho is a Public Health Environmental Compliance Specialist with the Fulton County Board of Health in Georgia. He holds a Master of Public Health in Environmental Health from Fort Valley State University, with distinction, and a First Class degree in Agricultural Economics from Kwara State University. His research focuses on sustainable electronic waste management in the United States, on compliance, on public participation, on life-cycle impacts, and on safer dismantling.
In this conversation, he explains what he is looking forward to build and advance in the US, why e-waste is a health issue as much as a waste issue, and what a measurable compliance system would look like in practice.
Who are you, and what do you do in the United States right now?
My name is Sodiq Abiola Omotosho. I am a public health researcher and environmental compliance specialist based in Georgia. Since January 2026, I have worked full-time as a Public Health Environmental Compliance Specialist with the Fulton County Board of Health. In that role, I inspect food-service establishments, tourist accommodations, swimming pools, land and septic systems through plan review and permits, and body-art facilities, and I help with public sensitisation on pest concerns such as mosquitoes. That work is about turning health codes into field checklists, documenting violations, agreeing corrective actions, and verifying that they are closed. That same discipline, clear standards, documented inspection, and verified correction, is at the heart of the work I am building for e-waste.
What exactly are you looking forward to build and advance in the US? Is it just “recycling”?
No, it is much more than recycling. What I am looking forward to build and advance in the US is a data-driven environmental health compliance framework for sustainable electronic waste management: risk-scoring models, inspection templates, tracking protocols, corrective-action workflows, dashboards, performance indicators, and public-education tools that municipalities, public-health departments, industrial facilities, and recyclers can actually use. Recycling alone does not tell you which collection point is storing batteries unsafely, which facility has repeat violations, which downstream recycler is certified, or which neighbourhood has low participation and high exposure risk. My framework connects those pieces, so risk can be scored, inspections can be prioritised, violations can be tracked to closure, and recovery can be measured.
Why does e-waste need a health compliance system? Why is it urgent?
Because electronics contain valuable materials and hazardous substances at the same time. When they are handled unsafely; manual dismantling, poor storage, open handling; workers and nearby communities can be exposed to lead, cadmium, mercury, flame retardants, and other toxicants, and contamination can leave a facility on clothing, surfaces, or vehicles. That is why compliance matters. It is not just about counting tonnes collected. It is about checking storage, ventilation, protective equipment, training, segregation of hazardous components, downstream certification, and whether a violation was actually fixed. Children and pregnant women are particularly vulnerable, and that is why a health system, not just a waste system, is needed.
What have you actually published or done in the U.S. on this topic?
I have published U.S.-focused work on e-waste compliance, life-cycle impacts, public participation, and safer dismantling. That includes a 2026 Metro Atlanta study on environmental health compliance and resource recovery outcomes in sustainable electronic waste management, which developed an Environmental Health Compliance Index combining collection access, segregation, worker protection, downstream certification, and recovery rates. It also includes a 2025 life-cycle assessment of the environmental and economic impacts of sustainable e-waste management, a 2025 study of public awareness, participation, and technological innovations in U.S. case studies, and a 2025 paper on robotics and automation in e-waste dismantling, which shows how safer dismantling can reduce worker exposure and improve recovery.
How is this different from what you already do at Fulton County?
My Fulton County work proves I can do compliance in the field. What I am looking forward to build and advance in the US is to design a system that other jurisdictions and facilities can adopt, for a waste stream that needs its own e-waste-specific approach. In Fulton County, I apply existing Georgia codes to food, pools, tourist accommodation, septic, and land use, and body art. The work I am building asks a different question: what would a standard, data-driven e waste compliance system look like, how would you score risk, inspect, track material to a certified downstream recycler, close a violation, and prove recovery; and how would you train other inspectors and facilities to use it? One is operating a system. The other is creating and scaling a system.
Who will actually use this framework? Give me a concrete example
A county or city that runs household hazardous-waste events, permanent e-waste drop-off points, and contracts with downstream recyclers. My framework would join their collection logs, inspection findings, complaints, permits, recycler certification, incident reports, neighbourhood data, and recovery reports into one compliance picture. That picture lets a health department see which collection points have the highest contamination or storage risk, which neighbourhoods have the lowest participation, which facilities need more frequent inspection, and which downstream partners show the safest handling and strongest recovery. It also lets them overlay environmental-justice and vulnerability information, so outreach and enforcement go first where exposure burden is likely highest.
When people hear “e-waste,” they think about the environment. What does this mean for everyday jobs and the local economy?
It means work, if it is done properly. When more electronics go through formal, certified channels instead of being discarded, dumped, or handled unsafely, more copper, silver, gold, palladium, and critical materials can be recovered here, instead of being lost or bought back as virgin material. That formal system also supports the people who run it: recycling and refurbishing workers, inspectors, trainers, and programme staff. To give a sense of the value at stake, EPA notes that recycling one million cell phones can recover about 35,000 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold, and 33 pounds of palladium. That is EPA’s illustration, not a promise about my own work. What I track, in practice, is much more specific: how much collection enters formal channels, how much goes to certified downstream recyclers, and how much recovery is actually documented.
A lot of environmental problems feel local. Why does this matter beyond Georgia?
Because the gap is national. There is no single federal consumer-electronics recycling standard, states have different laws and programmes, measurement is inconsistent, and data are fragmented. A framework that standardises risk, inspection, tracking, and reporting can be adopted across jurisdictions, not just in one county. That sits alongside federal work already under way: EPA’s National Recycling Strategy, including its goal to increase the recycling rate to 50 percent by 2030 and to standardise measurement and increase data collection; EPA’s sustainable management of electronics and batteries; CDC’s Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, which integrates environmental and health data for decisions; and DOE’s critical-minerals work, including reuse, recycling, and the Electronics Scrap Recycling Advancement Prize. My framework is designed to make those national goals work at the local inspection and programme level.
Why can’t this just be a regular job at one company or one council?
Because the work itself is not one job in one place. It is cross-sector by design: public-health departments, municipalities, industrial facilities, recyclers, universities, and community organisations, across different state-law structures. A single job description, one employer, one location, one set of duties, cannot capture designing a framework, trying it in one setting, training inspectors in another, and then adapting it for others. Tying the work to one employer would narrow it and slow down the benefit. The point is not whether I am a good employee in one role. It is whether this system can reach the places that actually need it, across sectors, instead of staying inside one organisation.
Does it Potentially create new Jobs for the U.S Economy?
Yes, by establishing professional and technical positions in environmental compliance, hazardous materials management, e-waste collection, recycling operations, and environmental monitoring, my project directly supports employment in the United States. Compliance evaluations, environmental data analysis, facility inspection, and resource recovery tasks requiring trained staff are all part of its execution. The project promotes employment and worker development throughout the domestic recycling value chain by bolstering the operational capability of recycling facilities and municipal waste-management initiatives through data analysis and interpretations. Additionally, these initiatives improve economic productivity, encourage domestic material recovery, and fortify the U.S. recycling infrastructure.
What have you been working on lately to move this forward?
Lately I have kept building my professional skills, and I want to be precise about what was attendance, what was training, and what is still a prototype. Recently, I attended the Georgia Environmental Health Association Annual Conference, August 26–28, 2026. I completed Environmental Health Training in Emergency Response (EHTER) Awareness on September 7, 2026, with the FEMA Center for Domestic Preparedness and CDC, and a Workshop on Informatics in Modern Public Health Practice on May 15, 2026. I also served as a judge at the 2026 Ohio State Science Day, as a scientific research evaluator. Those show continued U.S. professional engagement, and the next step is to turn the prototype tools, the inspection template, the risk-score rubric, and the dashboard design, into a defined pilot that can be tested and measured.
Some readers may have first heard about you through coverage back home. Where is this work actually happening?
My background and early research training are Nigerian — Kwara State University, agricultural economic. What I am looking forward to build and advance in the US, my current job, and my e-waste research focus are in the United States: Fulton County, Metro Atlanta, and U.S. case studies. I am based in Georgia, I work for the Fulton County Board of Health, and my Metro Atlanta study and U.S. case-study work are the base for this work. The same compliance logic could one day be useful elsewhere, but the work in front of me is American work, for American communities, facilities, and agencies.
What data tools do you use, and why should a health department trust them?
I work with SPSS, Stata, and Excel, with working knowledge of R; the tools I used as a data analyst and instructor at Softray Consultants, where I trained about 50 students in SPSS and GRETL, and as a graduate research assistant at Fort Valley State University. The point is not the software name. It is the discipline: a data dictionary, a common reporting vocabulary, minimum data elements, and indicators that can be compared across sites, collection completeness, inspection consistency, violation detection, corrective-action closure time, certified-downstream share, recovery documented, and participation. A dashboard that cannot be audited back to an inspection report and a corrective action is not a compliance system.
Who benefits most, and what about environmental justice?
Workers in e-scrap facilities first, because they face the direct exposure, and then nearby communities, especially communities that already carry higher environmental burdens and have less access to safe collection. My framework scores community vulnerability and environmental-justice indicators alongside facility risk, so outreach, collection access, and inspection frequency can be targeted where burden is likely highest, rather than spread evenly on paper. That is consistent with EPA’s EJScreen approach and CDC’s environmental-justice tracking tools.
What does success look like in one year and in six years?
In the near term, success is a validated prototype used in a defined pilot: standard inspection tools in use, risk scores applied consistently, corrective actions tracked to closure, and recovery and certified-downstream use documented, with baseline compared to pilot results. Over six years, the arc is clear: first, assessment and requirements; then framework design and prototypes; then pilot and validation; then expansion and training; then dissemination and policy engagement; and finally, a national model and toolkit that other jurisdictions can adopt without having to invent their own system from the beginning.
What is the hardest part of this work?
Data fragmentation and trust. Collection logs, inspection reports, complaints, permits, and recycler reports live in different systems, with different definitions. If you do not fix the data dictionary first, a dashboard will just display the fragmentation more prettily. The second hard part is behaviour: public awareness does not automatically become participation. My U.S. case study work found awareness improving without enough actual sustainable behaviour. That is why the framework includes education, access, and feedback, not just inspection, and why participation is one of its indicators, not an afterthought.
Tell us about your personal journey — Nigeria to Georgia
I studied Agricultural Economics at Kwara State University, where I learned quantitative analysis, resource allocation, and how incentives shape behaviour. I bagged a MPH degree in Environmental Health from Fort Valley State University, where I worked as a graduate research assistant, including sensitising rural farmers at Buck-a-Rama in Perry, Georgia, about zoonotic disease. That combination, economics and data on one side, environmental health and regulation on the other, is what led me to e-waste compliance, and to my current work at Fulton County. Along the way, I have also been involved in community work, including youth empowerment through agricultural skills transfer in Malete, Moro Local Government Area, and community development work through Kwara State University.
Are you the only person doing this? What makes you different?
No, and I would not claim that. EPA, CDC, DOE, state agencies, certified recyclers under R2 and e-Stewards, and many researchers are working on parts of this problem. What is specific to me is the combination and the product: a single, field-ready compliance framework that joins risk scoring, inspection, tracking, corrective action, and recovery measurement, built from U.S. compliance practice and U.S. e-waste research, and designed for adoption across jurisdictions. That is stronger than claiming to be the only expert. It shows I understand the field, I am building around existing standards, and I am focused on the framework, not on superlatives about myself.
What do you want readers, agencies, and recyclers to do after reading this?
For agencies and municipalities: look at whether your e-waste data can be compared across sites, whether high-risk facilities are inspected first, and whether violations are tracked to closure. For recyclers and industrial facilities: ask whether your downstream handling is certified, traceable, and documented, not just asserted. For residents: use formal collection, prepare devices safely, and ask where collected electronics actually go. If you run a collection programme, a health department, or a recycling facility and you want a more measurable way to run e-waste compliance, I would welcome a conversation about piloting or reviewing these tools.
If you could leave readers with one sentence, what would it be?
“E-waste should be managed the way we manage other health risks: with clear standards, data we can trust, inspections that find the real risks first, corrective actions that are actually closed, and recovery we can measure; so workers are safer, communities are protected, and valuable materials are not lost.”
