Nairobi — Anyone bringing up talk on the potential dangers of unmanaged electronic waste: those obsolete computers, mobile phones, television sets and telephone headsets which cannot be re-used, is likely to sound irrelevant and boring to many Kenyans.

People are bound to argue that they do not have enough of these gadgets and so the worry about what to do with them when they are dead is not the issue, at least for now.

That sounds convincing but you do not open a restaurant and wait for a couple of years to put up the toilets or "rest rooms".

Old computers need special rest rooms where the toxic chemicals in the circuit boards, connectors, solders, cathode tubes (laden with lead and barium) and mercury lamps do not leak into the soil or burn and pollute the air.

Any form of hazardous or toxic waste poses real danger to life. In 2006, a Dutch company, Trafigura, dumped toxic waste in Cote d'Ivoire.

The emissions from the waste, which had not been incinerated as required, resulted in the deaths of 10 people and the hospitalisation of 69 others. A law suit and criminal proceedings have been instituted against the corporation ( www.ban.org ).

THE DUMPING OF E-WASTE OR DIGITAL waste is of great concern to Africa and the rest of the developing world.

Firstly, these countries are the major recipients of the hand-me-down gadgets from the rich Western societies. We import tonnes of mitumba computers for sale or as donations to schools and religious organisations.

To be fair, some of these refurbished computers work well and can help in the first steps into the high-tech world, if only we did not have to worry about how to dispose of them almost as soon as we get them.

Secondly, most recipients of e-waste do not have the capacity to safely dispose of it, do not care or simply can not fathom the environmental consequences. When the Asian tsunami hit the coast of Somalia, it destroyed some containers and the toxic waste spread 10 km inland.

In Nigeria, some devious entrepreneur allowed a foreigner to keep 18,000 drums of toxic substances on his plot for a fee of $100 (Sh7,000) - a scandal which only came to the fore when the drums leaked. Similar incidents could occur for electronic waste.

Thirdly, rapid technological changes have rendered lots of stuff obsolete. What are we going to do with the rotary dial telephone sets in a world now ruled by wireless GSM and CDMA technologies?

By 2015 the analogue TV sets in our sitting rooms will give way to superior digital sets. What will we do with the old boxes?

Efforts have been made to control trans-boundary movement of hazardous wastes and their disposal, as an issue of grave concern, just like global warming.

The Basel Convention of 1989 prevents the transfer of hazardous waste from the developed countries to less developed countries (LDCs). There is also Greenpeace International and the Bamako Convention, which work for a toxic free environment.

So far, 169 countries, mostly European, have entered into the Basel Convention but the United States, which churns out tonnes of toxic waste, is yet to ratify the convention.

Basel Action Network or Basel BAN is an amendment signed by 63 members and addresses the increasing e-waste problems in Africa and Asia.

A Geneva report on ratification shows that the European Union has fully implemented the Basel Ban in its E-Waste Shipment Regulation (EWSR), making it binding in all EU member states.

Last December, Nairobi hosted a meeting on creating innovative solutions through the Basel convention. Basel signatories were also urged to ratify the convention's Liability and Compensation Protocol. Regional centres for Basel convention are in Egypt, South Africa and Mali.

The advantage of being a Basel signatory is that you can send material to another country that is a signatory of the convention for re-cycling or safe disposal.

LOCALLY, CORPORATIONS LIKE SAFARICOM have posted bins for people to drop mobile phones for recycling.

This is a caring gesture from the corporate world, which is normally the biggest source of e-waste.

But whether they do it well and according to the law is an issue for the National Environment Management Authority (Nema) to monitor and certify.

"Digital dump" is no idle talk. The strong words from conferences and conventions must be turned into real action to ensure a safe environment.

We live in Elizabeth Grossman's (author, High Tech Trash) world "where computers go to die, and kill".