Harness e-waste, not Earth, say scientists – BBC News BBC Homepage

The RSC is leading a campaign to draw attention to the unsustainability of the continued extraction of all precious elements used in consumer technologies.

The organization points out that geopolitical unrest, including the war in Ukraine, has caused huge spikes in the price of materials like nickel, a key component of electric vehicle batteries.

This volatility in the element market is causing “chaos in the supply chains” that enable the production of electronics. Combined with the surge in demand, this has caused the price of lithium – another important element of battery technology – to increase by almost 500% between 2021 and 2022.

Some key components are simply running out.

“Our habits of consuming technology are by no means sustainable and risk depleting the raw materials we need,” said Professor Tom Welton, president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, adding that these habits “continue to exacerbate environmental damage”.

Smartphones contain about 30 different elements, some of which are running out on Earth.

At the same time, the amount of e-waste generated is increasing by about two million tons every year. Less than 20% is collected and recycled.

“We need governments to revamp recycling infrastructure and tech companies to invest in more sustainable manufacturing,” Professor Welton said.

New research by the SRC has also revealed growing consumer demand for more sustainable technologies. In an online survey of 10,000 people in 10 countries, 60% of respondents said they would be more likely to choose a competitor to their favorite tech brand if they knew the product was made from sustainable way.

The survey also showed that people did not know how to deal with their own e-waste. Many respondents said they were worried about the effect on the environment of unused appliances they have in their homes but were unsure what to do with them or worried about the safety of recycling systems.

Elizabeth Ratcliffe, from the Royal Society of Chemistry, told BBC Radio 4’s ‘Inside Science’ program that many of us are ‘unwittingly storing precious metals in our homes’, in old phones and computers out of order. ‘use.

“Manufacturers and retailers need to take more responsibility,” Ms Ratcliffe said. Manufacturers and retailers need to take more responsibility,” Ms Ratcliffe said. “Like take-back programs, which allow people to return their electronics to a retailer and be assured they will be safely recycled.

“All this volatility in supply chains only reinforces the fact that we need a circular economy for these materials. Right now, we are just constantly extracting them from the ground.”

The company hopes to encourage people to take old and unwanted devices to recycling centers, rather than stashing them in drawers and forgetting about them. It points UK consumers to online resources where they can find the nearest center that is committed to safely recycling computers, phones and other devices.

“What we always say is reduce, reuse and recycle. That way it’s possible to keep a phone longer and sell an old phone or give it to a loved one,” Ms Ratcliffe says. “It’s going to take everyone working together to scale those processes and get the infrastructure in place, so we can all recycle our devices.”