4 ms·
Maybe a refund for consumers plus a collection fee for institutions would be an incentive to recycle, for both individuals and businesses. Your phone breaks, yo
by strken 9y ago
Maybe a refund for consumers plus a collection fee for institutions would be an incentive to recycle, for both individuals and businesses. Your phone breaks, you take it to the supermarket, they give you $10, they send in the IMEI or some other unique code and get $12 in return.
- mehrdadn 9y agoRecycling just isn't a substitute; it's far less effective. You're supposed to reduce, reuse, and then, if neither is possible, recycle... in that order.
- icebraining 9y agoRecycling a phone can mean reusing many of its components for repairing other phones (as part of the fourth R: refurbishing).
- adrianN 9y agoIn reality recycling a phone means shipping it to some poor country where it is burned in an open fire to recover some of the metals. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/burning-truth-behind-e-waste-dump-africa-180957597/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/burning-truth-...
- icebraining 9y agoFrom your link: "85 percent of the e-waste dumped in Ghana and other parts of West Africa is produced in Ghana and West Africa. (...) In other words, Agbogbloshie is not a global dumping ground. Like most places on Earth, it’s struggling to deal with what it generates on its own."
- mehrdadn 9y agoDo you know of any place I could recycle an old phone that would give some kind of assurance (even a pinkie promise... but preferably some kind of statistic) that this would actually happen? Would love some recommendations because I don't know of any.
- icebraining 9y agoI'm not from the US, but ecoATM claims they refurbish most and recycle responsibly the rest: https://www.ecoatm.com https://www.ecoatm.com
- mehrdadn 9y agoWow thanks, I'll check it out!!
- swerner 9y agoWhat good is a refurbished but old iPhone these days when there is no more software for it? Even when you're lucky enough to have backup copies of older software versions, the web APIs most rely on have been discontinued.
- icebraining 9y agoI don't know about the iPhone, but I'm still using a Nexus 7 from 2012 just fine. It runs Lollipop (released in 2014) and in my experience, most apps support it just fine, although I'm sure their developers hate me :)