The collective economies of Africa are set on a course to produce more electronic e-waste than Europe by 2017, according to Katharina Kummer Peiry, executive secretary of the Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes. At a recent Pan-African Forum on e-waste in Nairobi, Kenya, she attributed the exponential increase to population growth and the increased availability of mobile phones, computers and accessories. More recycling could be advanced, she says, by the fact that significant amounts of valuable metals such as gold, silver, palladium and copper can be salvaged from electronic devices at less cost than smelting them from virgin ores.

Source: TerraDaily.com