There are a lot of minerals in your mobile – and you might not want to know where they’ve come from:
Futures Forum: Conflict minerals in your gadgetry > the blood and sweat in phones and batteries
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And you might not want to know where they’ll end up:
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Watch The E-Waste Tragedy (english version) Online | Vimeo On Demand
Futures Forum: Planned Obsolescence: and The Men Who Made Us Spend
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Perhaps we need to rethink our gadgets:
Futures Forum: Made to last? >>> getting companies to offer a ‘lifetime product’
Futures Forum: Transitioning from a Consumer Culture >>> to Sustainable Consumption >>>
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The i newspaper looked at what’s now happening somewhere in the UK:
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Recycling and refurbing old phones tackles our appetite for newer, shinier gadgets
The UK produces more e-waste than the EU average, much of which contains chemicals capable of contaminating water and soil
While efforts to recycle disposable coffee cups and single-use plastic have made headlines across the UK, it’s not always transparent where your old smartphone ends up if you’ve dropped it off to be recycled. Chances are if you’ve used one of the UK’s many websites dedicated to offering cash for old gadgets, including musicMagpie and Mazuma Mobile, it’s ended up in an innocuous-looking building off the Kingston Bypass in Surbiton, where close to 100 staff are quietly beavering away to turn the tide on e-waste.
Recycling facility GSUK works with leading tech brands, including Sony, Microsoft, Samsung and Huawei, phone operators and recycling websites to recover, recycle, redistribute and reuse old electronic products to prevent them from piling up in landfill or polluting the environment through incineration…
Recycling and refurbing old phones tackles our appetite for newer gadgets | i news