Vietnam could become a dumping ground for electronic waste with hi-tech products of all kinds flowing into the country, especially cell phones, said an expert on China Duong Danh Dy.

Nokia representative, vice chief of the General Department of Environment Bui Cach Tuyen (middle) and Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Nguyen Van Duc attended a ceremony calling for recycling mobile phones in HCM City on June 13.

“In the past, super-cheap Chinese motorbikes ruled the Vietnamese market and then they disappeared because their low quality was not accepted by Vietnamese users,” said Dy. “Nobody paid attention to where the huge volume of ‘corpses’ of these vehicles went although it was a big source of pollution.”

Danger from super-cheap mobile phones

New models of super-cheap mobile phones from China are being introduced everyday in Vietnam. The most outstanding characteristic of this type of hand phone is that they have all the popular functions of cell phones, such as music players, cameras, video recorders, Bluetooth, etc. and they are very similar from design, function to price.

Nowadays, it is very simple to create a new brand of mobile phone by visiting trade centres in Shenzhen, China, where Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) provide all models of cell phone from the cheapest to the most expensive. However, Vietnamese mobile-phone traders can only buy finished products and cannot control product design, quality, or function.

Many traders also import mobile phones in kilos, used phones or broken phones. They don’t pay attention to quality; of 10 phones imported from China in this form, only one works on average. The remaining are dismantled for components.

All of these things are pushing the domestic market for mobile phones into chaos and Vietnam is on its way to becoming a dump for hi-tech rubbish.

Efforts to recycle cell phones

Nokia became the pioneer in recycling cell phones to protect the environment. It launched a campaign in mid June to collect 5,000 old cell phones for recycling.

According to a Nokia survey of over 6,500 customers in 13 countries, only three percent of people said they recycled their phones and 44 percent said they kept their phones although they didn’t use them.

Sony Ericsson has applied a global warranty policy, which ensures that all unused cell phones collected at its certified points will be recycled in an environmentally-friendly way.

VietNamNet/TT