Sustainable Electronics
Around this time of year, companies are promoting their new electronics devices for Black Friday and Christmas. I wonder how many of these devices will end up in landfill before the end of the year? Is there anything we can do to stop our world turning into some kind of Wall-E landscape?
Reduce
The counterpoint to Wall-E’s rubbish world is the circular economy. The idea being that materials from used items can be turned into new items, like stone from buildings being used to make new buildings.
We are not in this situation yet with technology companies but there is lots you can still do.
Probably the easiest and most useful thing you can do is to look after your stuff. If you don’t break or lose your phone or device then it doesn’t necessarily need replacing. If you are prone to dropping things then a padded case would be a worth while purchase. And when looking to buy a replacement then look for devices that are more resilient to knocks and scrapes.
Reuse
If you look after your device then one thing you can do is sell it later via a marketplace, online or physical store. And the flip side of this is to buy a second hand or refurbished model rather than new. There are also charities who will take old devices for selling or recycling.
Big companies might not officially have planned obscelence but they do encourage people to keep moving to the newest devices. And they don’t keep supporting operating systems updates for older devices.
But there are things you can do with an older device. Such as using it as a e-reader, photo frame or dedicated alarm clock. Or reusing it as a Screen for a Raspberry Pi or Arduino.
Repair
When selecting a new phone, one thing to consider is how easy it is to repair. Organisations like the Restart Project or IFixit share their thoughts on how easy things are to repair and have guides if you want to repair things yourself.
There are also companies who specialise in devices which are easier to upgrade or repair such as Fairphone and Framework who make laptops.
Recycling
There are lots of materials in phones that can be re-used. So when it is broken beyond repair, looks for your local recycling centre
Summary
So there’s lots of things we can do to help reduce the need for mining new materials and for creating piles of trash. The biggest is to reduce your need to always have the latest stuff. When you do replace old devices then look at re-using the old devices or selling them to allow others to use them. Think about repairability and buy devices that are either less likely to break or can be easily repaired. And when you do end of life your devices, make sure they get properly recycled.
Clean-up
Although Wall-E is fictional, there are actual clean up robots being built, such as Bebot the Beach Cleaner.
Metal sculpture in brass, mounted on an 1800s French Coin
