UN Addresses Mobile Phone Recycling at Conference

Many of us can’t wait to get our hands on the latest and fanciest mobile phone on the market. After all, mobile phones are the way to stay in touch and everyone likes to look good while using one. When the time comes to replace your old handset, you should be asking yourself, “Where do old mobile phones go to die?” Unfortunately, the answer is usually, “a landfill”.

Concerned about the astounding rate in which people are overturning their mobile phones and e-gadgets, the United Nations has chosen gadget-obsessed mobile phone users to be the keynote topic at the five-day conference of the Conference to the Parties of the Basel Convention. The ninth conference will be held in Indonesia later this week. MobileCrunch, a mobile phone website, quotes the agenda for the conference as addressing the subject of “adopting new sets of guidelines for the environmentally sound management of used and end-of-life mobile phones”.

A statement issued by the Basel Convention members adds that there are approximately three billion mobile phones in the world today, and “sooner or later these phones will be discarded, whole or in parts”.

While many countries, including the UK, have companies that offer a ‘recycling’ policy in which old handsets are refurbished and sent to third world countries help these regions develop into a sustainable society, this solution may not be a solution at all, especially if those phones are stripped of valuable components and tossed away where they will “leech out their heavy metals and hazardous chemicals”.