According to figures provided by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC in Spanish), there are 26 million mobile phones in Ecuador that were imported from 2003 to 2012. Of those, 16 million are in use and about 11 million are unused.

That is one of the reasons why the Ministry of Environment (MAE in Spanish) launched the National Integrated Solid Waste Management Program (PNGIDS in Spanish) in 2012, which set parameters about waste in the country, and since January of this year MAE proposed to recycle 2.5 cell phones per new device that is imported to the country.

The Committee of Foreign Trade (Comex in Spanish) said the import quota of equipment could be increased if mobile carriers comply with a collection rate of about 850 thousand units.

According to Cristina Larrea, Environmental Management Coordinator of Telefonica (Movistar), the company is promoting a campaign of sustainability practices and environmental management among the users and non-users to participate in unused cell phone recycling.

"What is happening is a pioneering campaign to promote the recycling of electrical and electronic waste. It does not matter if your computer does not work, is broken, or has no network, we receive it and give the person a reward," Larrea said.

According to the coordinator, the campaign, which began on July 1st and ends on August 31st, gives each person $15 in credit for phone calls ($5 for 3 months), in exchange of each unused cell phone.

Meanwhile, the National Telecommunications Corporation (CNT in Spanish), implements the campaign throughout the year and includes not only cell phone equipment, but anything with electrical circuits such as: speakers, headphones, rechargeable nickel cadmium or lithium batteries, webcams, video cameras, photographic cameras, chargers, printers, cable TV decoders, printers, among others.

According to the state telecom, they plan to recycle up to 30,000 cell phones and 18,000 kilos of electronic waste this year.

According to PNGIDS, telephone operators were given a quota of 2 million cell phones that can increase if they recycle old equipment, that is: for every 5 recycled cell phones they can import and sell 2 new ones.

In August 2012, Ecuador opened their first e-waste recycling plant, located on the Duran-Tambo road.

Recycled products are dismantled, sorted and sent to countries like Canada, that have electronic waste processing companies. According to the Finnish company Nokia, with a million phones you can get 35,274 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold and 33 pounds of palladium.

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