Own­ers of used and end-of-life mo­bile phones will have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to safe­ly dis­pose of their de­vices when a na­tion­al col­lec­tion cam­paign is launched lat­er this year.

The cam­paign will in­clude a sur­vey, a pub­lic aware­ness pro­gramme, and the cre­ation of col­lec­tion sites—all geared at chang­ing the way such elec­tron­ic waste (e-waste) is man­aged in this coun­try.  Most im­por­tant­ly, it ul­ti­mate­ly seeks to cap­ture this cat­e­go­ry of e-waste be­fore it reach­es land­fills across the coun­try.

The ini­tia­tive is one of many be­ing pur­sued un­der an um­brel­la project ti­tled, Demon­stra­tion of the En­vi­ron­men­tal­ly Sound Man­age­ment of Used and End-of-Life Mo­bile Phones in Trinidad and To­ba­go, which is be­ing car­ried out by the Basel Con­ven­tion Re­gion­al Cen­tre for Train­ing and Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer for the Caribbean (BCRC-Caribbean), with en­dorse­ment from the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment.

BCRC-Caribbean says the project is seek­ing to change the way e-waste is per­ceived and man­aged in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with a view to en­sur­ing it is dis­posed of in a man­ner that is en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sound.

“Elec­tron­ic Waste (e-waste) is a grow­ing con­cern world­wide,” BCRC-Caribbean ex­plains.  “The first is­sue is that many elec­tron­ic de­vices con­tain haz­ardous ma­te­ri­als that can leach in­to the en­vi­ron­ment as their cas­ings de­grade in land­fills, where a lot of con­sumer elec­tron­ic waste cur­rent­ly ends up. An­oth­er rea­son for the ur­gent need for re­spon­si­ble re­cy­cling is that many com­po­nents are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly scarce or are dan­ger­ous to source glob­al­ly.”

BCRC-Caribbean adds: “Glob­al es­ti­mates sug­gest that as lit­tle as 20% of e-waste is re­cy­cled.  How­ev­er, re­cy­cling just one mil­lion cell phones can re­cov­er more than 35,000 pounds of cop­per, 33 pounds of pal­la­di­um, 772 pounds of sil­ver, and 75 pounds of gold. These as­sets can be put to fu­ture use in new smart de­vices, semi­con­duc­tors for ve­hi­cles, and more.”

The or­gan­i­sa­tion notes that sev­er­al na­tion­al stake­hold­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with the sup­port of bmo­bile, are hop­ing to change the way e-waste is han­dled in this coun­try. 

Ac­cord­ing to BCRC-Caribbean, the to­tal num­ber of mo­bile con­nec­tions in T&T is al­most dou­ble the pop­u­la­tion, just short of two mil­lion sub­scrip­tions. The to­tal num­ber of smart de­vices, in­clud­ing mo­bile phones and tablets, can eas­i­ly be dou­ble this num­ber.

“At the end of their us­abil­i­ty, the project seeks to di­vert [these de­vices] from land­fills where chem­i­cals and heavy met­als such as mer­cury, lead, and ar­senic can end up be­ing ex­posed to hu­mans di­rect­ly in land­fills, or even find their way in­to un­der­ground wa­ter­cours­es and even­tu­al­ly be con­sumed. Many peo­ple are un­aware of this threat,” the or­gan­i­sa­tion warned.

BCRC Caribbean is un­der­tak­ing a mul­ti-pronged ap­proach to the project, Demon­stra­tion of the En­vi­ron­men­tal­ly Sound Man­age­ment of Used and End-of-Life Mo­bile Phones in Trinidad and To­ba­go.  The first phase in­volved a na­tion­al sur­vey launched in March 2022, to un­der­stand the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment and cit­i­zens’ knowl­edge and at­ti­tudes as it per­tains to end-of-life mo­bile phones. Phase two will see the pub­lic aware­ness dri­ve to dis­sem­i­nate in­for­ma­tion on the en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sound man­age­ment (ESM) of mo­bile phones.  This will be fol­lowed by the na­tion­al col­lec­tion cam­paign.

Phones col­lect­ed un­der the cam­paign will be sent to an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly cer­ti­fied waste man­age­ment com­pa­ny in Trinidad and To­ba­go for en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sound man­age­ment.  To fa­cil­i­tate col­lec­tion, re­cep­ta­cles will be placed at bmo­bile out­lets and oth­er lo­ca­tions across Trinidad and To­ba­go for a lim­it­ed pe­ri­od.

“Cit­i­zens are en­cour­aged to re­set their phones to fac­to­ry set­tings (if pos­si­ble) and dis­pose of them in the re­cep­ta­cles pro­vid­ed—at no cost—through the project. Where phones are in good con­di­tion in terms of phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance and can be boot­ed up with­out is­sue, these phones may be con­sid­ered for do­na­tion or re­fur­bish­ment abroad. Phones which can­not be pow­ered on will be dis­man­tled for re­cy­cling. Any make and mod­el of mo­bile phone is wel­come. User da­ta will not be ac­cessed in any way as the de­vices will be dis­as­sem­bled to their use­ful parts on pro­cess­ing,” BCRC-Caribbean says.

Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Shared Ser­vices at TSTT, Ger­ard Coop­er, is look­ing for­ward to a pos­i­tive re­sponse from the gen­er­al pub­lic.

“Last year, we worked with CAN­TO, the Li­on’s Club Dis­trict 60A, and Pi­ran­ha In­ter­na­tion­al to of­fer free col­lec­tion of used and old smart de­vices for re­spon­si­ble dis­pos­al,” he re­called.

“These op­por­tu­ni­ties are not free lo­cal­ly or glob­al­ly as some US States and oth­er coun­tries charge users to dis­pose of their de­vices at the end of the de­vice’s lifes­pan. We hope that cit­i­zens will use this op­por­tu­ni­ty, which is good for the en­vi­ron­ment and good for their homes—to rid them­selves of de­vice clut­ter and put any re­cov­er­able min­er­als and com­po­nents back to use,” he added.

Di­rec­tor at BCRC Caribbean, Jew­el Batchas­ingh, de­tailed the back­ground of this far-reach­ing e-waste ini­tia­tive, which ob­tained fund­ing in 2021.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go rat­i­fied the Basel Con­ven­tion for the Trans­bound­ary Move­ment of Haz­ardous Wastes and their Dis­pos­al in 1994,” she points out.  “The Fol­low-up Part­ner­ship to the Part­ner­ship for Ac­tion on Com­put­ing Equip­ment (PACE), es­tab­lished un­der this Con­ven­tion, is­sued a call for project pro­pos­als that would sup­port the on-the-ground im­ple­men­ta­tion of the guid­ance doc­u­ments de­vel­oped to sup­port the en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sound man­age­ment (ESM) of com­put­ing equip­ment and mo­bile phones.”

She added: “The Min­istry, the na­tion­al fo­cal point for Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­di­cat­ed an in­ter­est in sub­mit­ting a pro­pos­al, which BCRC-Caribbean then de­vel­oped for the afore­men­tioned project. The project was ap­proved for fund­ing in 2021.”

The BCRC-Caribbean di­rec­tor says the project al­so will in­form con­tin­ued ESM ef­forts.

“The Na­tion­al Work­ing Group for the project, which com­pris­es key lo­cal stake­hold­ers from the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors in­volved in waste man­age­ment, will al­so guide the de­vel­op­ment of a pol­i­cy pa­per for the ESM of this waste stream na­tion­al­ly,” she said.