What Technological Waste Is Doing To The Environment (& How You Can Help Stop It)

It’s no secret that the environment has had it pretty rough. Carbon emissions, oil spills, and coffee cups spring to mind when we think about the planet’s great polluters. But with all of the great technological advancements we’ve had recently comes a huge amount of technological waste, and it’s harming our environment in ways we never could have predicted.

Technology is great – whether it’s helping us stay connected, improving access to education or letting us stream Game of Thrones, it’s hard to argue against its benefits. Especially now, when recent advancements have given us self-driving cars, smart watches, and AI-powered home assistants.

But with all of this great new technology comes a downside: we’re making and disposing of more electronic devices than ever, and the planet is really feeling it.

What Is Technological Waste?

You might know it better as electronic or e-waste. Basically, it’s anything with a plug, battery or cord that you want to get rid of. Laptops, toasters, electric lawnmowers, your mum’s old DVD player – all technological waste.

Fun fact: the world generated the equivalent of 4500 Eiffel towers-worth of e-waste in 2016. Sorry I lied, that’s not actually a fun fact. It’s an alarming fact that should also be a wake-up call.

Australia, for its part, generates around 574,000 tonnes of this e-waste each year. If that sounds unreasonably big, it’s because it is unreasonably big: the Global E-waste Monitor 2017 report, a study conducted by the United Nations University and partners, found that Australians are the fourth-highest generators of e-waste per person in the world.

Is This Really So Bad?

Electronic devices aren’t necessarily the problem – e-waste actually has great potential to be recycled. It’s the way we’re handling these devices that’s causing issues.

Electronics contain valuable, non-renewable materials that can be recycled, but not if they end up in landfill or stashed in the back of a cupboard somewhere. Currently, only 20 percent of the world’s e-waste is recycled properly. In Australia, our e-waste collection rate is a measly 6.4 percent.

Electronics are actually highly recyclable. In fact, more than 95 percent of the material in electronics can recovered and used to make new products. By utilising these resources, we give Mother Earth a break. The precious minerals used to make circuit boards are, in many cases,  finite, which means that supplies in the ground can be exhausted if we continue to mine them. If there’s a better reason to recycle, we haven’t found it.

Here’s What You Can Do About It

Letting an old phone languish at the bottom of a drawer, for example, might seem like a better alternative because, hey, at least it’s not ending up in landfill, right? But it’s still wasting valuable resources, which add up when you consider that there are around 25 million unused handsets around Australia.

Instead of keeping old devices, drop them off at an e-waste collection service. In 2018, MobileMuster recycled more than 1 million phones and batteries and, through recycling, recovered 99 percent of their resources.

That saved 200 tonnes of CO2 emissions from being released into the air, reduced the need to mine for fossil fuels, and avoided 900kg of smog and particulate pollution being released.

It’s no wonder that more and more e-waste collection points are appearing across Australia.

The Future Is Bright And Full Of Recycling

It can be tempting to throw your old device away or keep it “just in case”, but every piece of technological waste that isn’t recycled does damage to the environment. Thankfully, there are lots of collection services that will recycle your devices without costing you a cent.

Local councils across Australia offer various e-waste collection and drop-off services. Check your local council website for more information and for a list of accepted electronic items.

For everything else, or if you can’t make it to one of these services, check Planet Ark’s Recycling Near You website for solutions to recycling your unwanted stuff. In addition to MobileMuster, there are a number of other take-back programs in Australia.

MobileMuster is the recycling program of the Australian mobile phone industry. Drop your old phone off at one of more than 3500 collection points, and they’ll dismantle and recycle the materials inside – the plastic from your old phone case could be reused to make shipping pallets and the lithium inside your phone’s old battery can be reused to make new batteries.

If you have an old phone or two at home, you can see the effects that recycling these will have on the environment on the MobileMuster calculator, just to put it into perspective.

Now I’m off to recycle my two old phones with MobileMuster, because it’ll save 772g of CO2 emissions and almost 4kg of mineral resources – basically the same as planting a tree, and we love trees!

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(Lead image: freestocks.org / Unsplash)

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Do something good for tomorrow. Recycle your old mobile today. Recycle at your local mobile phone retail store. Visit MobileMuster for details.