What you do with your old phone when you buy a new phone is an important decision for our Earth. Some people recycle their devices or exchange them for new ones. But many people seem to keep their cell phones in the closet or toss them in the trash.
This is what the international nonprofit Forum for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) explored as part of International E-Waste Day. According to the forum, 5.3 billion of the 16 billion mobile phones used worldwide will be e-waste by 2022.
The WEEE Forum said that if the phones had an average depth of 9 millimeters and were stacked on top of each other, the pile would rise by 50,000 kilometers. That’s 20 times higher than the International Space Station, and one-eighth of the way to the Moon.
“Despite precious gold, copper, silver, palladium and other recyclable components, experts expect the majority of [mobile phones] to be lost in drawers, closets or garages, or end up in landfills or incinerators,” the forum wrote in a blog post.
The WEEE Forum’s slogan for this year’s E-Waste Day was set accordingly: “Recycle it all, no matter how small.”
“This year we have focused on small e-waste items because they are so easy to stay in homes unused and pile up unnoticed or thrown into ordinary trash cans,” said Pascal Leroy, managing director of the WEEE Forum. and they don’t tend to realize that together they represent large volumes at a global level.”
Cell phones stand out as one of the most stacked small electronic devices today, the forum said. The WEEE Forum surveyed 8,775 European households in six countries representing the European Union to understand why people retain their old devices rather than recycle or repair them.
Why don’t we recycle cell phones?
The most common responses included:
1- I can use it again in the future (46%)
2- I plan to sell / give away (15%)
3- It has spiritual value (13%)
4- It may have value in the future (9%)
5- I don’t know how to destroy (7%)
6- I didn’t have time, I forgot, it doesn’t take up much space (3%)
7- Planned use in secondary housing (3%)
8- Presence of sensitive data (2%)
9- No incentive for recycling (1%)
Samsung announced last year that its recycling program has only taken 0.0019% of the old phones it has sold since 2015. It is assumed that some of these devices are still used by the original buyer, sold on the resale market or even disposed of as general waste.
One of the principal researchers of the Global e-Waste Monitor, Dr. Kees Baldé says, “The growth in e-waste generated over the past decade has been significantly higher than the growth in recycling. So it’s important to remind people of the importance of reusing or returning any electronic or electrical product left in their home drawers.”
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