A recent study has revealed that near about 40 million unused gadgets are stockpiled in the homes in the United Kingdom. And each of them has various valuable and rare elements. Royal Society of Chemistry has done a survey and shared how much-unused technology people are stockpiling in their homes. This organization has done this survey online and near about 2000 people took part in it. The survey has revealed that near about half of the United Kingdom households had at least one ‘not in use’ electronic device. 45% of the UK homes had nearly two to five unused devices. And the most surprising fact is that most of the people have shared that they had no plans to recycle their unused device collection.
“Ten phones, two laptops, digital cameras… all just sitting here. We’re not dealing with it.”- Louise Lewis was surveying the collection of unused gadgets which are piled up at the home. This kind of situation can easily imperil our ability to craft new devices.
Which elements are in danger?
Elisabeth Ratcliffe, a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said, “There are about 30 different elements just in a smartphone,” and “many of them are very rare.” Indium tin Oxide is a very rare metal and effective for touch screens because it is transparent and can conduct electricity. In solar panels, we also use the same metal and that means in the near future we will face a lot of need of this metal.
She added, “There’s not a lot of it in the Earth and you need a kilo of ore to extract just a few milligrams of indium.”
Tantalum is another rare metal and it is highly corrosion-resistant. It is just perfect for our small electronic devices such as smartphones, hearing aids, and pacemakers. Scientists guess that these two rare metals can run out within one century and our demand for new smartphones and other technology is increasing rapidly. Ms. Ratcliffe also added, “Even the copper in all that wire is not endlessly abundant,” and “On top of that, most of these devices are coated in plastic, which could be recycled.”
What should you do with your old tech?
All you can do by yourself is just recycling it. With the help of the internet now finding your nearest electronics recycling center has become easier. Stuart Price suggested this recycle way as the best option. “Take it to your local tip or a retailer – distributors actually have an obligation to take back material when you buy a new product from them. We need this material to go to reprocessing facilities, so it can be processed properly.” In this kind of situation, it can be said that manufacturers need to think properly about the entire life span of the devices during at early design stage so that the produced devices can easily get recycled. And as a user, all w can do is taking a sound time before jumping to our next tech device especially when our present device is working finely.
