These high-technology goods not only are bulky, they often contain toxic materials such as lead and mercury. If the e-waste is not taken care of properly, it can cause pollution and health hazards. The Basel Action Network is a private group focused on halting the trade in toxic goods, particularly waste goods. Executive director Jim Puckett says the world needs to take urgent measures to end toxic trash. "The industry has built in obsolescence unfortunately, so we're seeing things become waste quicker than every before," Puckett said. "Computers now have a life span of about two years now in the North; many mobile phones are turned over within six months when somebody wants to newest model. So we are creating a mountain and we're not going to stop people from consuming. So the first thing we need to do is to get the toxic materials out of the equation".
The issue of e-waste is one of several topics being discussed this week at the United Nation Program for Environment's conference in Nusa Dua, Indonesia.
Achim Steiner, the agency's secretary-general, says much of the e-waste should be recycled. Beyond the environmental reasons, there is also an economic incentive, he says: for example, three percent of the gold and silver mined worldwide is used in personal computers and mobile phones."If you start investing and recycling and reusing these materials, you actually begin to look at turning a problem into an opportunity; you start creating jobs, you start reducing the amount of metals that leaves the cycle of our economy, you can reuse them," Steiner said. "So those are all advantages if you begin to manage electronic waste not as we see from industrialized countries to least developed countries without legislation” The Basel Convention is an international agreement setting global guidelines on handling e-waste. But it is not without weaknesses.