Sales of household electronic appliances will greatly increase over the next decade in developing countries, causing an environmental disaster if not created new strategies to process as many televisions, phones and computers waste, a report said Monday Nations United.
The environmental and health risks presented by the increasing amount of electronic waste worldwide are especially urgent in developing countries, since some receive waste from rich nations, said the study from the UN Environment Program (UNEP English ).
The wastes are accumulating around the planet at a rate of 36 million tonnes per year, said the report, which clarified that the available data are not sufficient.
U.S. produces 3.3 million tons of electronic waste per year and it is China with 2.3 million tonnes, he said.
The program's executive director Achim Steiner said the world was not prepared for the explosion in consumer electronics that happened in the last decade.
"The world now faces a massive wave of electronic waste and we will strike again, particularly the least developed countries, which could become a dump," Steiner told The Associated Press before the executive session of the UNEP in Bali.
Some Americans and Europeans, he said, African countries have sent falsely declared broken computers as donations. The computer ended up being discarded near slums and became a danger to the health of residents, he said.
The report predicted that by 2020 the number of discarded old computers that China will quadruple over 2007. In India, old refrigerators, which contain dangerous gases could triple by that date.
The biggest growth in recent years has been phones and similar devices, he added.
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