| Less E-Waste, Please |
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By: Justine Huffman |
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 We’re bombarded with tech chatter and ads of the latest smartphones by Apple, Samsung, HTC, and other major smartphone producers daily. They entice us to splurge, to have the best phone of the moment, but what happens to the stock phones of yesteryear? A lot of them become e-waste, according to a new study by the University of Surrey in England.
E-waste, as reported by Greenpeace International, will triple in developing countries due to the consumer trend of frequent digital device upgrades, particularly among smartphone buyers. Our constant need for the latest and greatest in the mobile phone world comes with a price that doesn’t involve payment installments.
Many smartphones contain up to one thousand components, many of which contain toxic heavy metals. When discarded phones end up in landfills, living organisms and the environment suffers.
How can we end this harmful tech hazard?
By recycling.
There are no known chief phone carriers that provide recycling services for phones, though it would be a lot less harmful to Earthlings and the Earth itself. The valuable materials inside of mobile phones, like gold, could be mined and reused in the latest phone models. So why aren’t the top phone carriers offering these recycling services?
Lots of commercial phone carriers allow trade-ins for new phones, but no incentives for recycling unwanted and/or unused mobile phones.
T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, and the like, should be offering solutions to reduce e-waste, instead of focusing solely on how to upsell all of their latest smartphones and services.
Great influence births great responsibility, to our planet and mankind.
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Justine Huffman is an indie author, poet, and graphic artist residing in Delaware, USA. When she's not unleashing her creative powers, she enjoys reading humorous fiction, dining at local seafood eateries, and daydreaming.
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