That was the warning given here Monday over Indonesia’s lack of regulations on electronic waste as a new study from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) documented a sharp increase over the next ten years in the dumping of hazardous e-trash.

“We have no regulations on e-waste and it [the issue] is becoming more and more complicated,” said Imam Hendargo, the Environment Ministry’s deputy for the management of hazardous substances and waste.

The report, “Recycling — From E-Waste to Resources,” was presented at a forum on toxic chemicals here and included data from 11 developing countries to estimate current and future e-waste from products like computers, printers, laptops, mobile phones and television sets.

The eleven countries are China, India, South Africa, Uganda, Senegal, Kenya, Morocco, Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, and Peru.

Based on the report, discarded gadgets in China and South Africa will jump by 200 to 400 percent from 2007 levels by 2020. In India the figure is 500 percent.

There is no available data on Indonesia’s e-waste, Imam said, but, he added, it could be estimated based on the number of people who own refrigerators, television sets and mobile phones.

“If 10 percent of Indonesians own mobile phones that is [an indicator of] how much e-waste we have, not to mention how many own refrigerators or televisions. Nowadays, one household might even have more than one television,” he said.

According to London-based Business Monitor International, Indonesian consumers are expected to spend $7 billion on consumer electronics this year. Last year it reported that sales of LCD and plasma televisions, as well as Chinese cellphones, surged due to lower prices.

There are at least 100 million cellphone users in the country, with two of the largest cellphone service providers, Telkomsel and Excelcomindo, reporting a combined 90 million subscribers at the end of 2008.

With no existing regulations, Imam said that the government was still relying on voluntary action by companies willing to recycle their own e-waste.

“It is not just about e-waste, we also need to deal with medical waste, because no one really knows where it is being discarded and there are no regulations concerning that issue,” he said.

Achim Steiner, executive director of UNEP, said people don’t yet realize the impact of mountains of e-waste inundating landfills, slums, rivers and the environment in general. New policies must be developed to deal with the problem.

“The numbers that are emerging are staggering. We are roughly estimating the global generation of e-waste is growing by about 40 million tons a year,” said Achim, adding that in the US alone there were more than 150 million mobile phones and pagers sold in 2008.

Globally, more than one billion mobile phones were sold in 2007, up from 896 million in 2006.

Jim Puckett, executive director of the Basel Action Network, said that people were not going to stop consuming electronics.

“We’re seeing things becoming waste more quickly now. Every six months you see newer models of mobile phones. You can’t stop people from consuming electronics right away, but what we can do is get the toxic materials out of the equipment,” Puckett said.