UN wonders what we're going to do with 3 billion dead mobile phones

It used to be that mobile phones were a luxury yet to filter to the third world. Soon enough, their cellular infrastructure became a boon to those living in remote or underdeveloped locales. Finally, we reach an inevitable orgasm of garbage, the world-spanning disposal problem of three billion phones heading to the trashcan. The UN is holding a 5-day conference in Nusa Dua, Indonesia, to figure something out. From AFP:

The conference would "consider adopting new sets of guidelines for the environmentally sound management of used and end-of-life mobile phones," a statement from the organisers said. ... Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said Indonesia's long coastline made it particularly vulnerable to the illegal dumping of toxic waste.

"Due to its archipelagic nature, with the second longest coastline in the world, Indonesia is vulnerable to illegal traffic of transboundary hazardous waste," he said.

Hey, let's recycle them or create giant underground landfills and dump them there!

Hazard of old mobile phones under spotlight at UN meet [Yahoo! News]

[#1 posted by ianm , June 23, 2008 12:12 PM]

Another profitable niche for landfill mining/harvesting to latch onto and extract all the valuable hydrocarbons, metals and other components of cell phones. Although our currently collective lifestyles are horrendously wasteful and unsustainable, as soon as ambient chemical extraction becomes profitable, people in the not-too-distant future will be using any means necessary to acquire rights to 20th century landfill sites - they're just repositories of so much valuable material waiting to be exploited.

Until then, I guess we should figure out how not to drown in disused cellular equipment.