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UN chief, Baidu CEO co-launch app for e-waste recycling

Xinhua, September 3, 2015 Adjust font size:

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and CEO of China's search engine giant Robin Li on Wednesday night co-launched in Beijing a mobile application for electronic waste recycling to save resources and reduce pollution.

The Baidu Recycle 2.0 can help individuals disposing e-waste products easily find authorized companies to make an efficient and environment-friendly deal.

"Data revolution is giving the world powerful tools that can help usher in a more sustainable future," Ban said at the launching ceremony, who spoke highly of Baidu's big data technology and its corporate social responsibility.

The new app is considered a star product of UN Development Programme and Baidu's joint data lab to facilitate greener and more sustainable society in China.

"Our technology and Internet platform can contribute to China's clean development. And that's exactly what we want to do," said Robin Li, whose 15-year-old company commands 80 percent of domestic market.

The meeting with Li was Ban's first stop of his China visit from Sept. 2 to 6. The two talked over sustainable development, technology innovation and climate change, among other global issues.

Most of Li's questions for the Secretary-General were collected from Baidu PostBar, the online community integrated with the search engine.

Ban and Li signed their names on an old-fashioned laptop, the first of the 4,000 products recycled through the app's 1.0 version launched last year. The laptop will later be a part of an e-waste sculpture to further raise public awareness on recycling in China.

For now, many Chinese still sell their electronic wastes to unauthorized workshops, for convenience or for relatively good price.

These workshops are making huge profits out of brutally extracting rare metals from the wastes. However, the environmental damage caused by random disposal of toxic materials is a longer-term concern that cannot be ignored, experts have warned.

Ban is scheduled to attend China's V-Day celebrations on Thursday together with 30 heads of state and government leaders, which is the main focus of his 9th China trip in his 9th year as the Secretary General. Endit