Elec­tron­ic waste bins are be­ing placed around the coun­try to re­duce the im­prop­er dis­pos­al of mo­bile phones and mo­bile phone ac­ces­sories.

Bmo­bile has part­nered with the Basel Con­ven­tion Re­gion­al Cen­tre for Train­ing and Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer in the Caribbean (BCRC) and oth­er stake­hold­ers to pro­vide these bins to make it eas­i­er for cit­i­zens to re­cy­cle e-waste and pro­mote greater aware­ness about the haz­ards of im­prop­er dis­pos­al of these items.

In a re­lease, Bmo­bile stat­ed, “These tox­ins in e-waste or Waste Elec­tri­cal and Elec­tron­ic Equip­ment (WEEE) can cause harm to near­by com­mu­ni­ties, dam­age crops, and con­t­a­m­i­nate lo­cal wa­ter sup­plies. To re­duce these po­ten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing health ef­fects, bmo­bile is do­ing its part to re­duce the amount of e-waste that ends up in the na­tion’s land­fills.”

The re­lease con­tin­ued, “The BCRC in col­lab­o­ra­tion with CAN­TO, the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, sev­er­al mo­bile phone re­tail­ers, and bmo­bile launched the HEL­LO: Help Elec­tron­ics Live Longer cam­paign which pro­vides re­cy­cle bins across Trinidad and To­ba­go. Now avail­able in most ge­o­graph­ic ar­eas, the con­tain­er bins will al­low peo­ple to get rid of their elec­tron­ic clut­ter se­cure­ly while con­tribut­ing to a safer en­vi­ron­ment.”

Jew­el Batchas­ingh, di­rec­tor of BCRC-Caribbean ex­plained “the HEL­LO Cam­paign is an aware­ness cam­paign fo­cused on en­gen­der­ing be­hav­iour­al change. We hope to re­duce the land­fill­ing of used mo­bile phones and in­crease op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­fur­bish­ment, re-use, and re­cy­cling.”

White drums with the HEL­LO lo­go will be placed at bmo­bile lo­ca­tions to dis­pose of the phones. The lo­ca­tions are Cell Mas­ter in The Falls at West Mall and Trinci­ty Mall along with Cell 4 Less, Cen­tre City Mall Ch­agua­nas, and Cel­lu­lar Plan­et, Scar­bor­ough. Phones dropped off are not be­ing re­fur­bished or re­pur­posed but will be dis­man­tled and re­cy­clable ma­te­ri­als re­moved.

An­janie Rame­sar-Soom of the Cor­po­rate, En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial & Rep­u­ta­tion Man­age­ment team at TSTT, said, “While we are an ac­tive part­ner in many as­pects of this coun­try’s dri­ve to greater dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and digi­ti­sa­tion, we recog­nise that there are con­se­quences re­lat­ed to ex­po­nen­tial ad­vances in tech­nol­o­gy. Sup­port­ing ini­tia­tives like this will en­sure that these goals are sus­tain­able and leave a bet­ter en­vi­ron­ment for our young peo­ple who will ben­e­fit in the long run,” she stat­ed. “We al­so would like to re­mind every­one, whether they are our cus­tomers or not, this is a free and a won­der­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty to clear up elec­tron­ic clut­ter at home and con­tribute to a bet­ter T&T over­all.”

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said, “this project sup­ports our ef­forts to­wards the at­tain­ment of theme five of the Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy (Vi­sion 2030) which is plac­ing the en­vi­ron­ment at the cen­tre of so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. This is key as the risk of en­vi­ron­men­tal mis­man­age­ment threat­ens our food se­cu­ri­ty, hu­man health, and liveli­hoods.”