800 BILLION LITRES OF LONDON'S WATER AT RISK FROM POLLUTION BY MOBILE PHONE BATTERIES

11.13.06am UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 14th Jul 2004

Billions of litres of water could be poluted if mobile phones are not recycled

Mike Tuffrey, Liberal Democrat London Spokesman on the environment will today warn the Mayor and Londoners that the equivalent of 819,450 Olympic size swimming pools of water a year could be polluted by discarded mobile phone batteries every year.

Mr Tuffrey will be speaking in the London Assembly's Environment Committee meeting later today (14 July) to push for the correct disposal of hazardous waste in the capital. He will highlight that up to 600,000 litres of water can be polluted by one cadmium mobile phone battery. With Londoners buying more than 1.3 million new mobiles a year, 819,450,000,000 litres of water could be polluted if old mobiles are not properly recycled.

Mr Tuffrey said:-

"These figures must be a wake up call to the Mayor and Londoners. With mobile phones batteries able to cause this amount of damage it shows that we cannot afford to underestimate the effect of hazardous waste on our environment. Unless urgent action is taken to ensure Londoners can dispose of their old mobile batteries safely we could be left with an environmental ticking time bomb.

"Policy makers have been slow to grasp that the boom in hi-tech gadgets could leave our water supply and soil toxically contaminated. They have done too little and left it too late. It is time the Mayor took a lead on this issue - otherwise Londoners will be left paying the price.

"The Mayor must endorse and promote responsible mobile phone recycling and disposal schemes which reduce the risk of so many mobiles being dangerously dumped.

"Working with Ministers and local Councils, the Mayor must help in the battle to get a reprocessing and recycling plant for hazardous waste for London's harmful waste. If the French can have operations for treating toxic batteries why can't we? Londoners deserve the same."

Notes to editor

On 16th July 2004 a new EU regulation will come into force preventing hazardous waste from being dumped in the same sites as non-hazardous waste and requiring all hazardous substances to be pre-treated before disposal.

According to reports the cadmium (one of the chemicals classified as hazardous waste) from one mobile phone battery is enough to pollute 600,000 litres of water.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2603589.stm

The European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive will also come into force within the next year, which emphasises the responsibility of producers in disposal, encourages reuse and aims to influence the materials that are used in production of the goods and the techniques for reprocessing them. This directive introduces targets for separate collection, recovery and reprocessing through recycling.

· According to the 2001 census there were 7,172,091 people in London with 5,463,000 over 16 years old.

· Three out of four Londoners own a mobile phone that means roughly 4,097,250 have mobile phones in London.

· With a replacement mobile being bought on average once every 18 months that means that one in three mobile phones will be replaced each year or 1,365,750 in London.

· That means that discarded mobile phone batteries could potentially pollute 819,450,000,000 litres of water.

An Olympic size swimming pool holds around 1 mega litre (one million litres of water) that means that 819,450 Olympic swimming pools worth of water could be polluted if batteries are discarded and not recycled.

Fonebak is a scheme set up by five mobile service providers and Shields environmental group for the safe return and recycling of mobile phones. Eurosource Ltd is another organisation that specialises in assisting the collection and recycling of unwanted mobile phones so they do not end up in Landfill. Mr Tuffrey will call upon the Mayor and Members to endorse such schemes, with more customer options for returning unwanted handsets, to help highlight the environmental advantages of recycling mobile phones.

http://www.fonebak.com/main.html

http://www.esel.co.uk/docs/mobiles.htm

Société Nouvelle d'Affinage des Métaux (SNAM) is a French company managing a specialist recycling procedure for cadmium. Citron and Valdi/Tredi are other French plants that treat nickel cadmium batteries.