Study Shows Old Gadgets Are Still Being Hoarded in Large Volumes
Wednesday, August 21, 2019 - 22:07:42
A new survey from the Royal Society of Chemistry has shown that Brits are still clinging to their unused smartphones, tablets and other electronic devices even if they have been rendered obsolete by the advance of technology.
BBC News reports that the majority of households across the UK are home to at least one unwanted old gadget, with 45 per cent having five or more pieces of outdated technology gathering dust in drawers or stored unloved in the attic.
This means that at least 40 million devices are stashed in households nationally, representing a fraction of the total e-waste hoard that exists worldwide.
Study spokesperson Dr Elisabeth Ratcliffe argued that this is not just a waste from a monetary perspective, since consumers can sell old phones to get cash back, but also from the point of view of the resources they contain.
Around 30 precious materials are contained within the average mobile handset, many of which can be reclaimed and reused to make more devices. The rarity of elements like gold, silver and bronze means that each device which is not recycled perpetuates the need to mine for yet more materials.
Extracting the raw elements from the earth and processing them so that they are usable for manufacturing purposes is both costly and a burden on the environment, which is why the Royal Society of Chemistry is just one of the organisations currently campaigning to encourage more mobile phone recycling.
There are only finite resources available naturally, so at some point it will be essential to recycle old electronics, as there will be no straightforward way of procuring the materials apart from this. More education and information on the benefits of recycling old mobile phones and gadgets needs to be made available to the public to bring about the necessary changes.
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