Astana, Kazakhstan, April 21
By Daniyar Mukhtarov - Trend:
The United Nations Development Program and the Kazakh Ministry of Environment and Water Resources initiated a joint project of hazardous waste utilization, Kazakh Minister of Environment and Water Resources Nurlan Kapparov said at a briefing in the Central Communications Service under the Kazakh president in Astana on April 21.
"The United Nations Development Program supported by the Kazakh Ministry of Environment and Water Resources initiated an e-waste management project to solve the issues of e-waste safe disposal," he said.
"This project aims to develop a scheme for the electronic waste collection and recycling, installation of boxes to collect faulty cell phones in the electronic equipment sale centers," he said.
"The program implementation will start from 2015," Kapparov added.
"More than three million computers have been imported to Kazakhstan for the last 10 years, half of which was the "electronic waste"," he added.
The minister stressed that in "e-waste" includes broken cell phones, monitors, TVs, printers, which are taken to landfills and dumps near settlements.
"No dump meets the requirements, except for the landfill in Astana," he said.
Kapparov recalled that the office equipment contains heavy metals, namely, lead, mercury, cadmium, antimony and persistent organic pollutants that are hazardous to the environment.
translated by NH
edited by CN