Skip to content

Turning e-waste into opportunities

  • by JW

The Telegraph points out that the huge amount of e-waste we create can actually be recycled and earn a bit of money:

.

Got a new phone/headphones/laptop?  If you’re like many consumers, you’ll stuff your old one in a drawer. But what if you knew you were contributing to a growing e-waste crisis? And that you could actually make money from old tech? Harry de Quetteville reports.

What awaited you under the Christmas tree? Socks? Not likely – unless they had a circuit board in them. These days, the most popular presents are not cuddly, or cosy, or cosmetic. They’re electronic. Gadgets and gizmos. Mobile phones and tablets. A cornucopia of screens, silicon and batteries. In 2018, among the top sellers were the iPhone XR, the PlayStation Classic, and a video game, Red Dead Redemption 2…

The average household has £127 worth of old tech… So are you sitting on a small windfall? | telegraph.co.uk

.

We can do good things with our e-waste:

E-waste: recover, recycle, redistribute and reuse

.

Rather than let is end up on some dump the other side of the world:

File:Electronic waste at Agbogbloshie, Ghana.jpg – Wikimedia …

Agbogbloshie | wikipedia

The Toxic Effects of Electronic Waste in Accra, Ghana | citylab.com

 

And yet:

… for every 1000 tonnes discarded, there is an opportunity to create 15 recycling jobs and 200 repair jobs.

How potential of massive e-waste dump in Ghana can be harnessed | theconversation.com

.

And the idea is growing fast:

A New Circular Vision for Electronics: Time for a global reboot | greengrowthknowledge.org