H

ow many times have you changed your mobile phone? I never thought much about it until recently, after listening to a conversation between two junior high school girls in an elevator one day.

Still in their uniforms, the two girls were talking noisily, unaware of people around them. I didn’t pay much attention until one of the girls fished into her skirt pocket and took out a black mobile phone.

 “Hey, it’s new,” her friend said, grabbing the phone, a new BlackBerry Dakota, which boasts a touchscreen as well as a full keyboard. “But you just bought a new phone last month.”

The black phone’s owner smiled and took the phone back. “I just got this one yesterday. This is the latest one.” I could sense the tone of pride.

The two reached their floor and got out, but the things they said stuck in the back of my mind long after they’d left.

With new gadgets being launched almost on a daily basis — each with new and personalized features that make it hard for people to resist the desire to buy — you only need to look around to see that many cannot leave home without their preferred gadgets in their hands.

Some even feel it necessary to carry around two or three mobile phones, making a handbag no longer just a place to stash car keys and lipstick — it should also be spacious enough to fit a BlackBerry, an iPhone, an iPad and probably more.

In many places, it’s common to see people busy texting on their BlackBerries one minute — maybe even to someone sitting next to them — before swiftly switching to their iPads to work, read or play their favorite games the next minutess.

At home, it’s the same thing. People go for flat TVs, thin and slimmer laptops, bigger four-door fridges, cooler air conditioners, luxurious microwaves, food processors and much more.

I have nothing against buying as long as it’s done in responsible and sensible ways, not just something to satisfy the impulse during every big sale season.

The main questions remain. What do they do to the old electronics? Can we simply throw them away or is there a place where we can take them for safe recycling?

I cannot help thinking that if a person, even a child, has a cell phone each, and the phone is replaced every year — in many cases people switch mobile phones even faster, Jakarta, a home of some 10 million people, will soon be buried under tons of electronic waste.

In developed countries, such as Denmark, there is a sophisticated waste management system in place, allowing people to voluntarily come to recycling sites and dump their trash, including batteries and electronics, accordingly.

But in some developing countries, including ours, such practice is hardly heard of. It’s common to see people dump anything anywhere.

Many moves have been launched to reduce, reuse and recycle. Many large shopping malls have turned to biodegradable plastic bags and some communities have aggressively launched recycling projects in their neighborhoods.

Several companies and big supermarkets have also introduced trade-in programs to lure customers to bring in old or damaged electronics before buying new ones, although in most cases, the cash offered is far from attractive — if you take into account the transportation costs to trade-in big products like a TV, air conditioner or washing machine.

Despite the often-praised efforts, not much is heard about credible steps being taken to deal with electronic waste. After being dumped or traded in, are those devices being safely recycled or manually scrapped?

Dangerous parts — including toxic materials such as lead, mercury, arsenic used in electrical parts — are lurking behind our seemingly innocent computers and favorite electronics.

Eighty percent of electronic waste reportedly ends up in Asia. Are we free from this statistic? Who is watching over us, protecting us from being another country’s dumping site?

And responding to my own question, my current mobile phone is my eighth. My first cell phone, a Siemens, I bought in 1996. I lost it in a cab and when it was found and returned to me, I already had a new one, same type and brand. I sold the old one to a colleague.

All these years, I have always traded in my old phone before getting a new one simply because I cannot manage having too many — thinking that it would be so confusing if they all ring, ding or ping at the same time.

 — Stevie Emilia