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akarta residents can now dispose of their old and broken gadgets by leaving them with the Jakarta Sanitation Agency. The trash will then be destroyed in the proper procedure.

“Many people carelessly store their unused electronic products at home, [ignoring the fact that] the waste can be hazardous to our health,” the agency’s head, Isnawa Adji, said.

Isnawa encouraged all citizens who had such waste to send it to the agency’s office in Cililitan, East Jakarta. He added the agency would also open up some waste disposal booths during Car Free Day.

“We did this during a Car Free Day on Jl. Sudirman and Jl. MH Thamrin last week,” he said, adding that he had disseminated information about the initiative through his social media accounts.

As of Wednesday, the agency had collected 50 broken cell phones.

Isnawa said his agency would cooperate with waste-treatment company PT Prasadha Pamunah Limbah Industri (PPLI) to process the waste.

If residents of a neighborhood unit or a community unit want to collectively gather electronic waste, Isnawa said the agency would be ready to pick up the trash with a truck.

Meanwhile, PPLI technical and operational director Syarif Hidayat said the proper processing of electronic waste was of paramount importance since such waste could be harmful to both human beings and the environment, especially when the toxic heavy metals in the waste leached out.

Syarif said the waste contained, among other things, nickel, cadmium and mercury. A significant accumulation of the substances in the human body can lead to improper metabolic processes, or even cancer, he added.

Syarif explained that the waste could accumulate on land surfaces and contaminate the land surface with toxic substances. Surface water eventually found its way to underground water resources. The change in water chemistry affected organisms that depend on the water.

“The dangerous substances are hard to eliminate and will remain in the body for a long time,” he said.

PPLI will process the waste using technology that recycles dangerous substances within the waste.

In the initial phase of the program, PPLI said it would accommodate the processing of unused cell phones. It would dismantle the phone and sort out parts to be destroyed and parts to be recycled.

“We will process the waste safely. The process is environmentally friendly,” Syarif said.

Recent reports show that electronic waste is growing rapidly in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia.

New United Nations research even states that the volume of discarded electronics in East and Southeast Asia jumped almost two-thirds between 2010 and 2015, driven by rising incomes and high demand for new gadgets.

Altogether, there was a 63 percent average increase in electronic waste across the 12 countries analyzed, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Japan, totaling 12.3 million tons, a weight 2.4 times that of the Great Pyramid of Giza.