For every million mobile phones, you can recycle significant amounts of gold, silver, copper and even some palladium from e-waste.

Dispose of e-waste the wrong way and you’ve got a toxic hazard. U.S.-based information technology corporation Hewlett-Packard got it right and is turning e-waste into jobs in Africa, TheGuardian reports.

There are more mobile phones in Africa than the U.S. Electronic waste is expected to increase by 33 percent in five years, the report said. 

Hewlett Packard has had an e-waste management project in Kenya since 2010, but modern recycling facilities are still rare around the world, the report said. The multinational company, which sells laptops, printers and other hardware, software, and services, wanted to expand its work in Kenya and develop a blueprint for sustainable recycling that could be replicated in other developing countries.

To develop such a blueprint, Hewlett Packard needed to break down traditional barriers between lowest-income earners and multinational corporations, between local labor and global marketplaces, and between private, public and academic sectors.

So the company brought together recycling experts, financiers, regulators and academics. It partnered with the East African Compliant Recycling, the Kenyan authorities, the University of Northampton and German investment organisation Deutsche Investitions-und Entwicklungsgesellschaft, which offers financing in developing countries.

Together they helped develop a system in Kenya to responsibly dismantle and separate e-waste including domestic appliances, computers and mobile phones. The system needed Kenyans working on the project to get a fair price for the recovered materials.

For every million mobile phones, you can recycle 24kg (53 pounds) of gold, 250kg (551 pounds) of silver and nine tonnes (19,841) pounds of copper. You can even get a few kilograms of palladium, TheGuardian reports.

The result was East Africa’s first large-scale recycling facility and Kenya’s first-ever
registered collection network for e-waste. In Africa, Hewlett-Packard now has e-waste recycling projects in Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa.

The micro-businesses that do the collecting receive equipment and training to ensure they meet global standards with 40 collection points housed in shipping containers.

There is also a network of collectors who bring e-waste to the shipping containers. Micro-businesses and individual collectors are paid fairly, according to TheGuardian.

“This is the first model of its kind, not just in Africa but anywhere in the world,” said Robert Truscott, CEO of EACR. “This model is about connecting the collector to the global markets for the materials, and providing them with a fair and transparent price, to ensure they get the maximum value for the waste.”

This collaboration is having positive economic, social and environmental impacts in Kenya. By the end of 2014, the initiative will have created more than 2,000 jobs in Kenya’s e-waste management industry.

The project’s IT system provides full traceability for the financial transactions in the chain and its flow of material. Hewlett-Packard provided funding, IT equipment and IT design, which used mobile phones and cloud technology.

To reduce unsafe e-waste disposal, Hewlett-Packard provides education and training, consulting with Kenyan authorities to help develop national legislation, registration and infrastructure for responsible recycling.

Since 1957, Hewlett-Packard has recycled more than a billion kilograms of IT equipment from 70 countries, TheGuardian reports.