The study -- "Recycling -- from E-Waste to Resources" -- launched Monday at a Bali, Indonesia, meeting of hazardous wastes experts, predicts that by 2020 e-waste from old computers in China will have jumped by 400 percent from 2007 levels and by 500 percent in India.

By that same year in India, e-waste from discarded mobile phones will be about 18 times higher than 2007 levels. In China it will be seven times higher. Globally, e-waste is growing by 40 million tons a year, the report said.

China produces about 2.3 million tons of e-waste domestically each year, second only to the United States with about 3 million tons.

Even though China has banned e-waste imports, it remains a major e-waste dumping ground for developed countries.

The report is of considerable significance to the host country of the United Nations-sponsored conference. Indonesian Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta noted that as a vast island nation, Indonesia was vulnerable to illegal trafficking of hazardous substances and wastes. Hatta estimates that 2,000 locations in the country were potential entry points for such materials.

E-waste is often incinerated by backyard recyclers to recover valuable metals such as gold -- practices that release steady plumes of far-reaching toxic pollution and yield very low metal recovery rates compared to state-of-the-art industrial facilities, says the report.

"This report gives new urgency to establishing ambitious, formal and regulated processes for collecting and managing e-waste via the setting up of large, efficient facilities in China," said U.N. Undersecretary-General Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, in a release.

But India, Brazil, Mexico and other countries may also face rising environmental damage and health problems if e-waste recycling "is left to the vagaries of the informal sector," Steiner said.

"One person's waste can be another's raw material," said Konrad Osterwalder, rector of the U.N. University, which was among the co-authors of the report together with the Swiss EMPA research institute and Umicore, an international specialty materials group.

New technologies combined with national and international policies can transform e-waste into assets, Osterwalder said, and create new enterprises with "decent" green jobs.

"The challenge of dealing with e-waste represents an important step in the transition to a green economy," he said.

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