E-waste, that is. One of the issues that I (and my co-conspitrator Dr. Joe Webb) have written and spoken about often—typically in the context of worldwide demand for print—is that as nations in Asia and Africa develop, pretty much from scratch, they are building an electronic media-based infrastructure which does not need to recapitulate the analog-to-digital evolution of media we experienced in the past 500 years here in the West. So they can jump right into computers, mobile phone networks, and the Internet. What this means, in addition to less of a demand for print than many forecasters expect, is a larger amount of e-waste generation. So much so, in fact, that “‘One study suggests Africa will generate more e-waste than Europe by 2017,’ [said] Katharina Kummer Peiry, Executive Secretary of the Basel Convention on hazardous waste.” Chalk it up to the combination of population growth and penetration of all these devices. (We also should not forget that these nations have also often served as the dumping ground for the West’s e-waste, but they are perfectly capable of generating their own.)

Kenya for example exonerated information and communication technology equipment from import duties in 2008, in an attempt to boost access. Zambia followed suit last year. “The use of electric and electronic devices ... is still low in Africa compared to other regions of the world but it is growing at a staggering pace,” said a report launched last month summarizing findings from the E-waste Africa Programme of the Basel Convention. ... In Africa “in the last decade, the penetration rate of personal computers has increased by a factor of 10, while the number of mobile phone subscribers has increased by a factor of 100,” the report said.

E-waste recycling initiatives are few and far between, which is not surprising, but opportunities to solve a variety of problems simultaneously abound:

Achim Steiner, the head of the UN environment agency UNEP, that is hosting the three-day forum, said a seeming problem can be turned into an opportunity if the right recycling measures are put in place. “From one tonne of cellphones, minus the batteries, you can extract 3.5 kilos of silver, 340 grammes of gold, 140 grammes of palladium and 130 kilos of copper,” he told reporters, adding that the cost of smelting recycled metals is “three or four times less energy intensive than smelting virgin ores.” But that sort of recycling will only happen if Africa is given access to the necessary technologies, Steiner warned.