The disposal of massive numbers of unwanted mobile phones will be a key focus of a five-day meeting on waste management which started Monday in Indonesia, organisers said. The fate of the more than three billion of the gadgets in use will be discussed by more than 1,000 delegates from 170 countries at the meeting on the Basel Convention in Bali, a statement said. Delegates will discuss new guidelines for disposing of the phones, which have grown from technological obscurity into a household essential, and a major waste challenge, in a matter of years. The conference would "consider adopting new sets of guidelines for the environmentally sound management of used and end-of-life mobile phones," a statement from the organisers said. "The use of mobile phones has grown exponentially from the first few users in the 1970s to ... more than three billion in April, 2008. Sooner or later these phones will be discarded, whole or in parts." While highlighting the phone issue, organisers said the effect of hazardous waste on human health and livelihoods would be a focus of the ninth "Council of Parties" meeting of the 1992 treaty. Opening the conference, Indonesian environment minister Rachmat Witoelar said Indonesia's long coastline made it particularly vulnerable to the illegal dumping of toxic waste. "Due to its archipelagic nature, with the second longest coastline in the world, Indonesia is vulnerable to illegal traffic of transboundary hazardous waste," he said. Speaking later, Mr Witoelar said rich nations needed to do more to stop their toxic waste being dumped in poor countries.