Dispose of old phones with Dtac's help

Dispose of old phones with Dtac's help

TECH

Have no idea what to do with your old mobile phones, batteries and accessories? A new project by Dtac might suggest a way out.

The giant mobile operator, in collaboration with Tes-AMM (Thailand), introduced the "Think Smart" project to encourage people to properly manage the electronic waste by dropping their old mobile phones, batteries and accessories to designated boxes. These boxes are placed at Dtac service centres nationwide and Tesco Lotus stores in Bangkok.

Last year, more than 590,000 tonnes of hazardous electronic waste were discarded, according to the Thailand State of Pollution Report 2015 by the Pollution Control Department of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

Around 65% of the waste was from electrical and electronic equipment. The rest were other hazardous wastes such as batteries, light bulbs, and chemical containers. As for hazardous waste management, provincial administrations were tasked with providing collection and disposal areas for community hazardous waste. In 2015, there were 83 community hazardous waste centres; 42 were in use and could collect a capacity of 250 tonnes of community hazardous waste, 174 tonnes of these were disposed.

Most of the waste from electrical and electronic equipment came from general households. More than 50% of the population sold their electronic garbage while the rest was either dumped or given away. Very few e-waste management programmes for electronic wastes, such as buy-back schemes that offered a discount for new electronic devices, are available. Improper management of e-waste potentially causes environment and public health issues.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has developed a roadmap for sustainable reduction of problems caused by e-waste and pushed all relevant organisations to implement the National Master Plan on Waste Management Act, which provides support for the private sector to collect, transport and dispose hazardous waste.

On-uma Rerkpattanapipat, Dtac's head of Communication and Sustainability Division, said there are currently 83 million mobile phone numbers in use in Thailand. The life cycle of a cell phone is generally shorter than two years and its battery's lifetime is around 200 charge cycles or about one year and four months.

Dtac has promoted the environmental preservation programme for more than a decade, with 120 designated drop-off centers for customers to discard their unused batteries and accessories. These devices will then be passed onto Tes-AMM for appropriate disposal and recycling. More than 1.5 million pieces of electronic waste were collected since the launch of the project that had reduced carbon dioxide emission by an estimated 18.87 million kilogrammes.

Luc Scholte Van Mast, managing director of Tes-AMM (Thailand), said the company provides e-waste recycling services and was the first in Asia to receive "responsible recycling", or R2, certification through the Sustainable Electronics Recycling International.

"These standards guarantee an e-waste management through appropriate processes and standards. Dtac has collected unused mobile phones and deteriorated accessories and brought them to Tes-AMM for extraction of precious metals," he said. This results in environmental preservation by helping reduce the need of mining and carbon footprint. By bringing one cell phone to the recycling process, this can reduce carbon dioxide emission -- the cause of global warming -- significantly, he said.

-- Sasiwimon Boonruang

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