The Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau said yesterday that it would draft regulations to standardize the recycling of used electronic products such as printer cartridges and mobile phones. 

The regulations could ease enormous pollution caused by heavy metal elements found in the circuit boards of phones and non-biodegradable residue from ink cartridges.

According to the bureau, so-called digital waste is rarely disposed of properly.

However, no details of the regulation have been released so far.

Ink cartridges, which need replacement after two to three months of use, contain various chemicals that can be harmful.

A single drop of ink residue, scientists say, can pollute up to 60 cubic meters of water.

The residue is particularly noxious as it takes at least 1,000 years to fully degrade.

Heavy metals such as gold, mercury and lead used in cell phone circuitry pose a similar danger.

According to the China Computer Association, local consumers use more than 4 million ink cartridges and discard 10,000 mobile phones every year.

However, only 1 percent of cartridges are legally recycled, according to the Green Dove Printer Hardware Recycling Company, the only licensed dealer of used printer hardware in the city.

Since its establishment last year, the company has been collecting used cartridges and send them to a recycling center managed by the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau.

Zhou Jianwei, manager of Green Dove, said they service about one fifth of the city's 5,000 companies that have cartridge refuse.

"Few are aware of the harm of ink cartridges, let alone the concept of recycling them," he said.

That was made evident when a cellular phone shop on Fuzhou Road put a recycling bin near its entrance last year to collect used mobile phones and batteries. The bin remains empty until now.

Profiteers, however, sometimes manage to acquire discarded cartridges and phones, which they use to create counterfeit electronic products.

"They dismantle the phones and take out their valuable metals, and desert the rest," said Green Dove's Zhou.

While most consumers do not seem to pay attention to the potential harm of improper disposal, some are aware of the dangers and do what they can to prevent materials from falling into wrong hands.

Grace Wang, an assistant at a private company, said she refills cartridges when they run out of ink, and does not buy new ones until they absolutely need replacement.

Asked if she deposits old cartridges at recycling centers, she said she would if she knew where to go.

Asked whether his firm provides recycling services, Li Yiping, a researcher at TCL Co, a domestic IT enterprise, said: "We are behind our overseas counterparts when it comes to recycling and environmental protection."

(Shanghai Daily February 11, 2004)