After months of serving people, most phones will become electronic waste, thrown away or left in a corner, never to be touched.
According to the Forum on Waste and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), when they are no longer in use, most phones will be left in drawers, lockers, warehouses, or thrown in the trash and end their lives in landfills. Waste or domestic waste incinerators.
Pascal Leroy, General Director of WEEE, said that in 2022, the campaign would focus on small-sized items because “this is a device that often goes unnoticed in families and easily thrown in the trash. domestic waste”.
To help users better understand the number of 5.3 billion phones in the newly published report, WEEE said that if each phone is, on average, 9mm thick, stacking them will form a tall tower. About 50,000 km, or one-eighth of the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
Meanwhile, recycling mobile phones and many other forms of electronic equipment allows manufacturers to reuse materials that cannot be regenerated in nature, such as gold, copper, silver, and palladium. In addition, many components from the old machine can be installed to work on the new product.
The organization also conducted a survey in 2022 with the participation of 8,775 households in 6 European countries to find out why many people have the habit of keeping their old equipment instead of taking it to recycle or repair it. Further use. As a result, up to 46% of users think they will use the device again at an unspecified time in the future; 15% said they plan to sell or donate; 13% kept it because it was related to some memory.
While 7% did not know how to deal with old electronics, 9% of users said it could be useful in the future. Therefore, they keep the products in the house (remove drawers, cabinets). For those who decide to throw away their phones, this act causes a big problem for the environment by creating unnecessary waste, requiring a lot of resources and energy to dispose of.