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BBC MUNDO RADIO
ACCRA, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Communications equipment manufacturers, Nokia, launched a campaign on Friday in association with Ghana's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) aimed at helping to control conditions the precipitated climate change and environmental degradation.
The company hoped to retrieve all crashed mobile handsets of all brands for recycling through the programme.
As part of the world-wide Nokia's Leadership in environmental sustainability, the programme further aimed for a recycling society, which has been running in 85 countries already.
DanWatch, a Danish non-governmental organization, reported recently that Ghana was suffering from e-waste dumping through the importation of obsolete used electronic goods including mobile phones and computers which could have been recycled in their homes of origin.
Osagie Ogumbor, West Africa Communications Manager of Nokia, told media here on Friday that metal recycling made sense so Nokia had been using it instead of wholly new materials in their production.
"Use of recycled metals saves 60 to 90 percent of energy, emissions and waste, compared to that of the use of virgin metals in production," Ogumbor said.
Since the global supply base of some key metals would last for just 40 more years if no recycling took place, it was prudent for manufacturers to adopt recycling as part of the source of their raw materials, instead of depending wholly on virgin materials.
Ogumbor disclosed that Nokia's target was to make sustainability part of everything they did, provide products and services, enabling sustainable choices and leverage environmental features as a driver for innovations.
He told Xinhua in an interview that Nokia had been conscious of the environmental impact of their products.
For that reason, he said, when the company detected that Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC) which was used to manufacture plastic parts of cell phones was harmful to human health, they withdrew its use in their phones.
"All materials we use in our phones today are recyclable," he said, adding that the company wanted all materials used in Nokia products and processes to be safe to people and the environment.
"We aspire to go beyond legislation and compliance. Our main aim is that we know all substances in our products," he said.
On the old handset retrieval programme, Ogumbor said that Nokia was receiving phones of any brand, not just Nokia brands.
The EPA was also fighting against the proliferation of telecom masts which has become a major environmental menace in the country.
Director of Inter-sectoral Network Division of the Ghana's EPA, Samuel Anku, observed that climate change had continued to receive the attention of governments and policy makers because of its implications for governance and socio-economic development.
"The global phenomenon is projected to be most severe for developing countries including Ghana," he noted.
He said it was therefore apparent that a stronger voice was needed to promote climate conservation and environmental protection issues in the country.
