China's cellphone shipments increased to 560 millions last year, up 8 percent year-on-year, according to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

The data from the academy, affiliated to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, also show Chinese consumers are likely to replace 400 million to 500 million cellphones a year, adding to the existing heap of about 1 billion discarded cellphones.

In stark contrast, the recycling rate of cellphones is less than 2 percent. A blue book on electronics consumption, issued by Shanghai's Horizon Research Consultancy Group in 2015, says 65.4 percent of consumers choose to discard, but not recycle, their old electronic devices.