Geneva – The International Telecommunication Union (ITS), UN, and the International Solid Waste Association are to work together to track and help deal with a soaring amount of electronic wastes worldwide.
According to the UN Environment Programme, up to 50 million tonnes of electronic wastes are expected to be dumped in 2017, which sees a 20-per cent-increase from 2015.
The ITS said auch partnership will support countries to produce reliable and comparable e-waste statistics, and will also deliver capacity building workshops and raise visibility on the importance of tracking and managing e-waste.
“ITS has a track record of providing the world with the most reliable and trustworthy ICC-related data,” said ITS Secretary-General Hour Zhao.
“We are pleased to be part of this partnership and to lend our expertise and our long standing experience in data collection to assist countries to track and measure their e-waste, so that responsible e-waste management can be implemented.’’
Measuring e-waste is an important step towards tackling it, as the statistics help to evaluate development over time, set and assess targets, and also identify best practices of policies.
Better e-waste data also helps minimise its generation, prevent illegal dumping, promote recycling, and create jobs in reuse, refurbishment and recycling sectors.
This will contribute to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, in particular, to ensuring “sustainable consumption and production patterns.”
“Better statistics will inform policy making to minimise the generation of e-waste, prevent illegal dumping, promote recycling and create valuable jobs in the reuse, refurbishment and recycling sectors,” said Brahma Sand, Director of ITS Telecommunication Development Bureau.
“This will also contribute to achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal 12, which seeks to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns,” he added.
UNEP said as technologies change at great speed and as access to and use of electrical and electronic equipment increases, the products’ life cycles have become shorter and many designs do not support repair or reuse.
The agency said as a result, the amount of electronic waste, or e-waste, is growing rapidly.
The agency added that most e-waste has not been properly documented or treated through appropriate recycling chains and methods.(