12 ms·

Five billion phones to be thrown away in 2022?

103 points by kitkat_new 4y ago

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
Recycle your electronics: https://www.consumerreports.org/recycling/how-to-recycle-electronics-a7432818850/ https://www.consumerreports.org/recycling/how-to-recycle-ele... I bought a certified refurbished phone recently that works as good as new (with a new battery) but is cheaper than a new phone. Even has a new IMEI. The side effect is it's better for the environment. https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/certified-re-newed-phones/ https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/certified-re-newed-ph...
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  A problem with phones are that updates are only for a few years on Android. One to three years or so.
- raincom 4y ago
  I’m not so sure about this. I had apple replace battery on my iPhone 8 Plus. Battery life is not good compared to my iPhone 12.
- frfl 4y ago
  How do you know if a refurbished device has a new battery?
  - metadat 4y ago
    Android F-Droid app store has battery condition checker apps that'll show how many charge cycles the current battery has on it.
    - frfl 4y ago
      Best I've found is 'cpu info' on F-Droid, it shows the battery health and other useful hardware stats. I checked on 4 devices (2 year old, 2 year old, 4 year old, 8 year old) and all reported battery health as 'Good', so not super detailed.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      There is a massive amount of fraud surrounding unofficial batteries so I certainly wouldn’t put it past them to just reprogram the battery cycle count. It isn’t terribly hard to do.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
    The refurbisher tells you (Samsung themselves in this case)
- maltalex 4y ago
  The problem is software support. Once you stop getting security updates, it’s game over even if the hardware is still usable.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    Root it yourself and do what you want. I've always considered the whole "but the security!!!1" to be another form of planned-obolescence propaganda.
    - maltalex 4y ago
      > Root it yourself and do what you want. Thanks, but I have more important things to do. > I've always considered the whole "but the security!!!1" to be another form of planned-obolescence propaganda. Planned obsolesce? Of course. But why propaganda?
    - gruez 4y ago
      >I've always considered the whole "but the security!!!1" to be another form of planned-obolescence propaganda. So you would feel safe doing your online browsing (including banking) on windows xp?
      - userbinator 4y ago
        Yes, especially because that depends far more on the browser than the OS. IMHO just using JS whitelisting and something like an adblocking HOSTS file will already eliminate most of the attack surface. ...and if you use something like Win9x, chances are the majority of malware binaries aren't even runnable either.
        Hackbraten 4y ago
        There have been tons of vulnerabilities in image and video decoders. Those have been causing massive attack surfaces in the browser, and this also affects people who use ad blockers and JS allowlists.
- twothamendment 4y ago
  Part of the problem is the ability to get a new battery for an older device. I was happy with my 4 year old phone, but needed a new battery. The only ones for sale had the same date of manufacture as mine and all the reviews said they were barely better than their old battery. It kills me that something so small and inexpensive as the battery was the reason I had to find a new phone. Not to get too far off topic, but it sounds like this is going to be an issue with EVs too - I hope not.
  - throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
    At least with EVs there will be enough financial incentive for a 3rd party battery market. For phones it doesn't make sense to perform surgery to replace a battery, but for cars the savings will be worth it.
whimsicalism 4y ago
Five billion seems extremely high - are there really people who go through so many phones in a year that they raise the number up to this?
- twawaaay 4y ago
  I think the same. The number seems completely unrealistic. I don't know of any person who retires one phone every year. Also, a lot of phones get second life, being usually passed within families or sold used.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Lots of people retire a phone a year, many more after 2, but these phone tend to be resold as refurbs, and not even close to 5billion people own their own phone at all.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  I agree. According to data compiled by Statista, there are 15 billion smartphones in existence right now, and "only" 1.5 billion sold per year. So by next year, we're going to have 30% fewer devices? Hard to believe.
- dang 4y ago
  The article calls it an "estimate, based on global trade data". It links to neither the data nor how the estimate was made. It does say the estimate was given by "the international waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) forum" - perhaps someone has an institutional interest in that number being high.
- tsol 4y ago
  What happens to phones that don't get bought? I imagine some amount of those phones are simply disposed of
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    1 per person per year?
newaccount2021 4y ago
mistrial9 4y ago
back-story-anecdote: during graduate school, this issue rose to the top of "green environmental impacts of computer use" .. in 2007 as part of an invited gathering at Google Mtn View, a speaker stood on the podium in front of about 100 googlers of various stripes, and gave a ten minute presentation on E-Waste, the BAN network, efforts in California to make an electronics recycling system (CRTs were first), disposable flip-phones, persistant heavy metals in the food chain, and a bit more.. the punchline was "this group has a special responsibility" .. end-result? 2007 credit crisis, Google make more billions, almost fifty percent of small business recyclers in California go broke due to cash flow, and E-Waste volumes doubled, and doubled again. Zero traction, zero commitment, lots of Teslas. Later, Apple made some apparently superficial commitments. This is in the most "green" plus most "tech" center of the USA. bitterly disappointing that the wealth of the tech industry sat on its hands, because product liability is a third-rail in consumer products of all kinds.. it is not in the news, it is not discussed, and meaningful legislation -- a lot like gambling -- is deeply and quietly dismantled behind closed doors. Very few bright spots and much more waste, every year, year after year. It is not just recycling, it is a right to re-use, making designs that include user serviceable parts, and enabling some kind of consumer to industry return route.
LaurensBER 4y ago
It's such a shame that there isn't a larger community around reusing/recycling these old phones. Most of the recentish phones contain hardware that performs far better than e.g a Rasberry Pi (plus a screen, camera and built-in UPS) and they are far easier to find than a Rasberry Pi. With a bit of tinkering one can run a "full" Linux distribution on Android phones (although hardware acceleration is a bit wonky and definitely not plug and play) and due to the size, Wifi, 3G/4G and battery they make excellent little servers. I have an older phone running as an ARM server with a 10 buck/month sim-card with unlimited data. Unless my house burns down or it crashes it should get a fairly good uptime. Getting a dedicated server with UPS and a 4G modem would be far more expensive and worse for the environment! Here's some links to help you get started (from my personal notes): ## Running Linux - [Installation & Usage - udroid wiki](https://udroid-rc.gitbook.io/udroid-wiki/udroid-landing/quick-installation-and-usage https://udroid-rc.gitbook.io/udroid-wiki/udroid-landing/quic...) - [Get Started - Andronix Documentation](https://docs.andronix.app/ https://docs.andronix.app/) - [Running Debian Linux on Android device natively | by The Quantified VC | Medium](https://medium.com/@quantvc/running-debian-on-android-device-natively-73545c9b0757 https://medium.com/@quantvc/running-debian-on-android-device...) - [GitHub - adi1090x/termux-desktop: Setup A Beautiful Desktop/GUI In Termux](https://github.com/adi1090x/termux-desktop https://github.com/adi1090x/termux-desktop) - [Graphical Environment - Termux Wiki](https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Graphical_Environment https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Graphical_Environment) - [GitHub - RandomCoderOrg/ubuntu-on-android: Run Ubuntu with pre-installed Desktop Environments in android/termux with ease! Everything is preinstalled so just download install and done](https://github.com/RandomCoderOrg/ubuntu-on-android https://github.com/RandomCoderOrg/ubuntu-on-android) ### Hardware acceleration - [GitHub - termux/termux-x11: Termux X11 add-on application. Still in early development.](https://github.com/termux/termux-x11 https://github.com/termux/termux-x11) - [Termux GPU Hardware Acceleration Tutorial | Ivon's Blog](https://ivonblog.com/en-us/posts/termux-compile-mesa-driver/ https://ivonblog.com/en-us/posts/termux-compile-mesa-driver/) - [How to use Termux X11 - The XWayand server on Android phone | Ivon's Blog](https://ivonblog.com/en-us/posts/termux-x11/ https://ivonblog.com/en-us/posts/termux-x11/) ### Docker - [Install Docker on Termux · GitHub](https://gist.github.com/oofnikj/e79aef095cd08756f7f26ed244355d62 https://gist.github.com/oofnikj/e79aef095cd08756f7f26ed24435...) - [Package request: Docker engine · Issue #60 · termux/termux-root-packages · GitHub](https://github.com/termux/termux-root-packages/issues/60 https://github.com/termux/termux-root-packages/issues/60) - [This tutorial shows how to run docker natively on Android, without VMs and chroot. · GitHub](https://gist.github.com/FreddieOliveira/efe850df7ff3951cb62d74bd770dce27 https://gist.github.com/FreddieOliveira/efe850df7ff3951cb62d...) It's also very easy to hookup a Bluetooth controller + [cheap dock](https://aliexpress.com/item/1005003527044516.html?algo_exp_id=4f6fc362-4480-40a6-9a09-2e4621f58e5b-9&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2212000026177180267%22%7D https://aliexpress.com/item/1005003527044516.html?algo_exp_i...) (not supported on all models but Samsung, Motorola and Huawei do usually have pretty good support) and use them for emulation purposes as well. How capable? An Samsung Galaxy S9 (from 2019) will be able to emulate the following systems: - Gamecube (up-scaling in light games) - PS2 (fractional (e.g 1.5x) up-scaling in light/medium games) - PSP (up-scaling in most games) - Dreamcast (up-scaling in most games) - PSX (up-scaling in all games) - N64 (up-scaling in all games) IMHO a far better solution (both from a cost and environmental perspective) than a Playstation or SNES Mini console. Added bonus is the lower power consumption that it's very easy to take with you if you're travelling :)
lizardactivist 4y ago
Recycling and buying renewed or refurbished phones is good, but the fact that many phones are unsupported after three or sometimes even two years is a problem. Qualcomm has been a big culprit in this for many years now. They refuse to support their chipsets for too long, because they can reduce expenses not having to maintain them, and more importantly they make more money selling more chipsets to manufacturers.
- a-dub 4y ago
  this is correct. there ought to be a law where if hardware is bound to software, and the software goes out of support in a way that renders the hardware useless, then it must be open sourced. notably post qualcomm pixel phones from google have five years of guaranteed updates. (pixel 6 and above) apple seems to also do a good job of keeping up software updates for many years. (8+ for some iphones iirc)
  - kevincox 4y ago
    I would even be happy to see required labeling for how long a product will be supported for. Just like we have energy usage guides, mass or volume listed and nutrition labels it should be mandated to label how long a product is supported for. If Cloud services are shut down or security vulnerabilities are unpatched in that timeframe you have to give full refunds/recalls and/or get slapped with significant fines. It is getting better with companies doing this voluntarily (at least the companies that do an ok job with support) but standardized labeling and required promenance would be invaluable.
  - david_allison 4y ago
    Samsung recently moved to 4 years of updates (with 5 on some flagships): https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-galaxy-os-upgrade-one-ui-android-unpacked-2022/ https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-galaxy-os-upgrade-one-ui...
  - gst 4y ago
    > notably post qualcomm pixel phones from google have five years of guaranteed updates. (pixel 6 and above) 5 years of security updates. Still only 3 years of guaranteed Android version upgrades: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705 https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705
lupire 4y ago
The ody clearly contradicts the headline: > There are an estimated 16 billion mobile phones worldwide - and in Europe, almost a third are no longer in use. So that's 5B total, not in 2022. Then the article goes on to conflate "hoarded at home" from "trashed".
- kurthr 4y ago
  I was gonna say... "Wow, we throw away 3x more phones that are sold every year!". To be clear 1.35B mobile phones shipped in 2021. That makes the problem (with a 3 year replacement) about 10x smaller than described. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/samsung-led-smartphone-shipments-for-2021-beating-out-apple-research-says/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/samsung-led-smartphone-ship... If you'll take that liberty with a headline, why should I trust the rest of the reporting? There's a problem, but not what is described.
- permo-w 4y ago
  a third in Europe, not a third of the total
crazygringo 4y ago
Honestly, I find it really hard to get worked up about cell phone e-waste in the grand scheme of environmental issues. People seem to confuse the cost of something new with the harm in throwing it away -- they get upset about $250 AirPods not getting recycled, while they don't give a second thought to throwing away a couple pairs of $1 AAA batteries, when it's about the same level of landfill impact. Or in this case, they think there's something wrong with throwing away a 5 oz (140 g) cell phone, but don't feel particularly bad when they finally dispose of an old 50 lb (22 kg) air conditioner -- or a 3,000 lb (1,360 kg) car. (Using these numbers, one car is the same mass of material as almost 10,000 phones.) Putting it into perspective, cell phones are nothing. There's more glass used to make a jar of peanut butter, and you throw away more plastic after a family-sized Chinese takeout meal. And yes if there are precious metals inside that can be recovered, then let's recover those -- but only if it's economical. Because that's a pure question of economics. We don't need to be "virtuous" -- if markets really think the metal is going to be that valuable because we're going to run out, then they will pay you accordingly handsomely for your old broken phones. But it doesn't seem like we've reached that point yet, because nobody's paying anything.
- plzbo 4y ago
  To me this seems to be a case of whataboutism. Just because there are worse things to do environmentally speaking does not mean that this is not a problem.
  - tormeh 4y ago
    We should focus our efforts where the impact:effort ratio is the most favourable. This doesn't seem particularly productive.
    - plzbo 4y ago
      This is true of course, but we shouldn't discard any attempt to improve the situation, just because there are bigger fish to try.
      - 4y ago
CamelCaseName 4y ago
Where is the true source of this statistic? The article cites WEEE forum, but taking a look at a WEEE forum blog post on the topic [0], it says: > Experts expect roughly 5.3 billion mobile / smartphones will drop out of use this year. Who are these experts? Where are these numbers coming from? Maybe I'm missing it, but no one is cited for the stat. [0] https://weee-forum.org/ws_news/of-16-billion-mobile-phones-possessed-worldwide-5-3-billion-will-become-waste-in-2022/ https://weee-forum.org/ws_news/of-16-billion-mobile-phones-p...
tuatoru 4y ago
Well, that answers a question I had. To power the world on PV, we need to make about 2 billion panels a year. My question was "I wonder how many cellphones are made per year?"
esturk 4y ago
A public campaign can be created to increase people's involvement such as the Olympics. Both the Tokyo Olympic Medals[1] and to a lesser degree the Rio Olympic Medals were made from recycled electronics. The interesting part about the Tokyo 2020 Medals was that it was done through a public donation effort. All it took was less than 50,000 tons of junk devices. Now just imagine how many precious medals are wasted according to the article with 74 million tons a year! [1] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/feb/08/olympics-medals-recycled-gadgets-electronic-waste https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/feb/08/olympics-medal...
Waterluvian 4y ago
This is like the moronic replacement of plastic straws in Ontario. The paper straws work for many drinks but for some, like Iced Capps, they disintegrate half way through the beverage. The frustration is that they’re making life stupider in order to harness a drop in the bucket of change. Go clean up the fishing industry’s colossal waste first.
- tehjoker 4y ago
  generally the idea is to do tiny things that people hate so they a) feel like something is being done and b) don't actually impact industry or make people want to do more to impact industry that's because we're not allowed to actually impede wealth accumulation
  - WWLink 4y ago
    It's kinda genius because then when the regulations are proposed that would actually make an impact in the industry, the company leaders can be like "see? This is just virtue signalling like those awful paper straws! And we'll have to pass the costs on to you, our customers! You don't want that, right?"
- thrown_22 4y ago
  And the fact 95% of all plastic ocean waste comes from 10 rivers, 8 of which are in Africa.
  - jwolfe 4y ago
    I think you're specifically referring to plastic waste in the ocean. This number is not at all accurate in terms of total plastic waste (including landfills, etc.).
- permo-w 4y ago
  why do we even need straws in the first place? just stop bothering with them at all
  - 4y ago
recycledmatt 4y ago
There are serious problems e-scrap recyclers are looking at, but this is repeating old statistics, and has no clue of what the industry is facing. A decade ago, it was all about what we would do with CRTs. Five years ago, it was that the value of circuit boards was dropping and lcd mercury containing materials. Now, it is what will happen with all these batteries and the percentage of plastics by weight of the pounds handled are going up significantly. CRT glass or mercury capacity is not an issue any more. The stream changes rapidly, and recyclers adapt.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
Unfortunately the amount of recoverable material from a phone is negligible. It’s very difficult to recycle phones because first you have to remove the battery.
- dymk 4y ago
  Is it? The process for recycling batteries is to shred them and then perform "industrial process" to separate out the useful stuff, basically like refining raw ore all over again. The phone, outside the battery, might contain a little bit of plastic and metal, and some glass. Seems the battery is the bulk of what one would want to recycle.
  - Overtonwindow 4y ago
    You absolutely cannot shred a lithium battery. It will explode. Any type of lithium battery and electronic makes it more expensive to recycle. They must remove that battery first. It would be super simple if we could just throw everything into a shredder, but lithium batteries are different.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
keepquestioning 4y ago
Why cant the waste phones be put into a massive cluster to work on protein folding or hard problems?
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Because old compute hardware is close to useless. After a few years, the power cost exceeds the cost of recycling and producing new hardware.
- dymk 4y ago
  Same reason people don't mine Bitcoin on CPUs anymore
ge96 4y ago
I recently bought a vintage computer (made in late 90s). It's cool but useless today. I always think about that with regard to e waste like "it could be used" but no not really. Maybe you could power a bunch of them/distributed compute but is it worth it. "Give them to a poor country" like they want your old tech? Idk I think about minimalism eg. have only one computer vs. a few that each get used a few times. But that's the beauty of having the ability to buy things too.
akomtu 4y ago
Think of this e-waste as a giant wheel made of phones and other electronics: this wheel gets pushed by billions of users, driven by the need to look better than others, and the electricity the wheel produces is the profits that feed the rich, who are driven by greed. Both users and owners are blinded by desires. The by-product of this curious process is waste all over the planet.
kornhole 4y ago
We need modular phones like the frame.work laptop. This is possible with some limitations, but Apple and others will not make as much money. Battery replacement is a no brainer, but why can't the camera and other components be a module to remove and replace when a new one is released?
- seba_dos1 4y ago
  My Librem 5 has a replaceable battery and two replaceable modules on M.2 cards: 4G modem and WiFi/BT card.
josephcsible 4y ago
I've only ever thrown away phones for two reasons: 1. Part of the phone (e.g., the battery, charging port, or screen) stopped working, and getting it repaired either was impossible or cost as much as buying a new phone did. 2. The manufacturer stopped releasing software updates, and due to things like SafetyNet, locked bootloaders, or lack of open-source drivers, nobody else could step up to do so. If both of those problems went away, I can see myself using the same phone for a decade or more.
- MisterSandman 4y ago
  What phone are you using that got 10+ years of updates?
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    I'm not currently using such a phone. If I implied that I was, I didn't mean to.
- cute_boi 4y ago
  I think battery is the major problem. I had a s6 and I wasn't able to replace it battery. And, I had to dump it after only 3 years of purchase. Personally speaking, companies must be forced to provide official battery for at least 5 years.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Lovely. These companies should skip a year rather than brag about using 20% recycled aluminum.
stainablesteel 4y ago
for those who might not be aware, recycling rare earth metals from various forms of tech is actually a geopolitical struggle of the west china has the largest and only deposit of a high number of rare earth metals on the planet within their borders, any kind of political discontention could mean being cut off from this supply. and they're invaluable for multiple layers of modern society. if you feel this isn't a problem, just remember europe didn't feel being reliant on russian gas was a problem either and they're going to be feeling the repercussions this winter
footlose_3815 4y ago
[dead]
WirelessGigabit 4y ago
I wonder how many phones are thrown out because of software that seems to get more and more resource hungry because they’re developed by people who don’t realize the cost of every library they import. Think about it, from a normal usage perspective, the iPhone gotten a LOT faster, but apart from camera improvements is the mail app really better? Or Messages? Facebook? No. In fact a lot of apps just have gotten slower. Not to mention the slowness because of all the timeout my iPhone hits because I use Pi-hole.
t0bia_s 4y ago
I have my old phones in box. I will try fix them when I find same devices elsewhere. Also... There are no motivation to bring old phones somewhere for recycling. At least in my country only one motivation was to bring old phone to store for having ridiculous sale for new one. That is, for me, still consumerism over recycling.
nokya 4y ago
I have five smartphones in my drawer, all in perfect condition except for a battery that won't hold more than two to three hours. I wish I could at least buy battery replacements and change it easily. The other problem is the selling cost: whoever I will sell the smartphone to will very likely not keep it and sell it right away to someone else in need, at a higher cost. I may be alone on this but that disturbs me to the highest level and I end up keeping them in my drawers.

103 points by kitkat_new 4y ago

Recycle your electronics: https://www.consumerreports.org/recycling/how-to-recycle-electronics-a7432818850/ https://www.consumerreports.org/recycling/how-to-recycle-ele... I bought a certified refurbished phone recently that works as good as new (with a new battery) but is cheaper than a new phone. Even has a new IMEI. The side effect is it's better for the environment. https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/certified-re-newed-phones/ https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/certified-re-newed-ph...

formerkrogemp 4y ago
A problem with phones are that updates are only for a few years on Android. One to three years or so.
raincom 4y ago
I’m not so sure about this. I had apple replace battery on my iPhone 8 Plus. Battery life is not good compared to my iPhone 12.
frfl 4y ago
How do you know if a refurbished device has a new battery?
- metadat 4y ago
  Android F-Droid app store has battery condition checker apps that'll show how many charge cycles the current battery has on it.
  - frfl 4y ago
    Best I've found is 'cpu info' on F-Droid, it shows the battery health and other useful hardware stats. I checked on 4 devices (2 year old, 2 year old, 4 year old, 8 year old) and all reported battery health as 'Good', so not super detailed.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    There is a massive amount of fraud surrounding unofficial batteries so I certainly wouldn’t put it past them to just reprogram the battery cycle count. It isn’t terribly hard to do.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
  The refurbisher tells you (Samsung themselves in this case)
maltalex 4y ago
The problem is software support. Once you stop getting security updates, it’s game over even if the hardware is still usable.
- userbinator 4y ago
  Root it yourself and do what you want. I've always considered the whole "but the security!!!1" to be another form of planned-obolescence propaganda.
  - maltalex 4y ago
    > Root it yourself and do what you want. Thanks, but I have more important things to do. > I've always considered the whole "but the security!!!1" to be another form of planned-obolescence propaganda. Planned obsolesce? Of course. But why propaganda?
  - gruez 4y ago
    >I've always considered the whole "but the security!!!1" to be another form of planned-obolescence propaganda. So you would feel safe doing your online browsing (including banking) on windows xp?
    - userbinator 4y ago
      Yes, especially because that depends far more on the browser than the OS. IMHO just using JS whitelisting and something like an adblocking HOSTS file will already eliminate most of the attack surface. ...and if you use something like Win9x, chances are the majority of malware binaries aren't even runnable either.
      - Hackbraten 4y ago
        There have been tons of vulnerabilities in image and video decoders. Those have been causing massive attack surfaces in the browser, and this also affects people who use ad blockers and JS allowlists.
twothamendment 4y ago
Part of the problem is the ability to get a new battery for an older device. I was happy with my 4 year old phone, but needed a new battery. The only ones for sale had the same date of manufacture as mine and all the reviews said they were barely better than their old battery. It kills me that something so small and inexpensive as the battery was the reason I had to find a new phone. Not to get too far off topic, but it sounds like this is going to be an issue with EVs too - I hope not.
- throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
  At least with EVs there will be enough financial incentive for a 3rd party battery market. For phones it doesn't make sense to perform surgery to replace a battery, but for cars the savings will be worth it.

whimsicalism 4y ago

Five billion seems extremely high - are there really people who go through so many phones in a year that they raise the number up to this?

twawaaay 4y ago
I think the same. The number seems completely unrealistic. I don't know of any person who retires one phone every year. Also, a lot of phones get second life, being usually passed within families or sold used.
- lupire 4y ago
  Lots of people retire a phone a year, many more after 2, but these phone tend to be resold as refurbs, and not even close to 5billion people own their own phone at all.
missedthecue 4y ago
I agree. According to data compiled by Statista, there are 15 billion smartphones in existence right now, and "only" 1.5 billion sold per year. So by next year, we're going to have 30% fewer devices? Hard to believe.
dang 4y ago
The article calls it an "estimate, based on global trade data". It links to neither the data nor how the estimate was made. It does say the estimate was given by "the international waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) forum" - perhaps someone has an institutional interest in that number being high.
tsol 4y ago
What happens to phones that don't get bought? I imagine some amount of those phones are simply disposed of
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  1 per person per year?

newaccount2021 4y ago

mistrial9 4y ago

back-story-anecdote: during graduate school, this issue rose to the top of "green environmental impacts of computer use" .. in 2007 as part of an invited gathering at Google Mtn View, a speaker stood on the podium in front of about 100 googlers of various stripes, and gave a ten minute presentation on E-Waste, the BAN network, efforts in California to make an electronics recycling system (CRTs were first), disposable flip-phones, persistant heavy metals in the food chain, and a bit more.. the punchline was "this group has a special responsibility" .. end-result? 2007 credit crisis, Google make more billions, almost fifty percent of small business recyclers in California go broke due to cash flow, and E-Waste volumes doubled, and doubled again. Zero traction, zero commitment, lots of Teslas. Later, Apple made some apparently superficial commitments. This is in the most "green" plus most "tech" center of the USA. bitterly disappointing that the wealth of the tech industry sat on its hands, because product liability is a third-rail in consumer products of all kinds.. it is not in the news, it is not discussed, and meaningful legislation -- a lot like gambling -- is deeply and quietly dismantled behind closed doors. Very few bright spots and much more waste, every year, year after year. It is not just recycling, it is a right to re-use, making designs that include user serviceable parts, and enabling some kind of consumer to industry return route.

LaurensBER 4y ago

It's such a shame that there isn't a larger community around reusing/recycling these old phones. Most of the recentish phones contain hardware that performs far better than e.g a Rasberry Pi (plus a screen, camera and built-in UPS) and they are far easier to find than a Rasberry Pi. With a bit of tinkering one can run a "full" Linux distribution on Android phones (although hardware acceleration is a bit wonky and definitely not plug and play) and due to the size, Wifi, 3G/4G and battery they make excellent little servers. I have an older phone running as an ARM server with a 10 buck/month sim-card with unlimited data. Unless my house burns down or it crashes it should get a fairly good uptime. Getting a dedicated server with UPS and a 4G modem would be far more expensive and worse for the environment! Here's some links to help you get started (from my personal notes): ## Running Linux - [Installation & Usage - udroid wiki](https://udroid-rc.gitbook.io/udroid-wiki/udroid-landing/quick-installation-and-usage https://udroid-rc.gitbook.io/udroid-wiki/udroid-landing/quic...) - [Get Started - Andronix Documentation](https://docs.andronix.app/ https://docs.andronix.app/) - [Running Debian Linux on Android device natively | by The Quantified VC | Medium](https://medium.com/@quantvc/running-debian-on-android-device-natively-73545c9b0757 https://medium.com/@quantvc/running-debian-on-android-device...) - [GitHub - adi1090x/termux-desktop: Setup A Beautiful Desktop/GUI In Termux](https://github.com/adi1090x/termux-desktop https://github.com/adi1090x/termux-desktop) - [Graphical Environment - Termux Wiki](https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Graphical_Environment https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Graphical_Environment) - [GitHub - RandomCoderOrg/ubuntu-on-android: Run Ubuntu with pre-installed Desktop Environments in android/termux with ease! Everything is preinstalled so just download install and done](https://github.com/RandomCoderOrg/ubuntu-on-android https://github.com/RandomCoderOrg/ubuntu-on-android) ### Hardware acceleration - [GitHub - termux/termux-x11: Termux X11 add-on application. Still in early development.](https://github.com/termux/termux-x11 https://github.com/termux/termux-x11) - [Termux GPU Hardware Acceleration Tutorial | Ivon's Blog](https://ivonblog.com/en-us/posts/termux-compile-mesa-driver/ https://ivonblog.com/en-us/posts/termux-compile-mesa-driver/) - [How to use Termux X11 - The XWayand server on Android phone | Ivon's Blog](https://ivonblog.com/en-us/posts/termux-x11/ https://ivonblog.com/en-us/posts/termux-x11/) ### Docker - [Install Docker on Termux · GitHub](https://gist.github.com/oofnikj/e79aef095cd08756f7f26ed244355d62 https://gist.github.com/oofnikj/e79aef095cd08756f7f26ed24435...) - [Package request: Docker engine · Issue #60 · termux/termux-root-packages · GitHub](https://github.com/termux/termux-root-packages/issues/60 https://github.com/termux/termux-root-packages/issues/60) - [This tutorial shows how to run docker natively on Android, without VMs and chroot. · GitHub](https://gist.github.com/FreddieOliveira/efe850df7ff3951cb62d74bd770dce27 https://gist.github.com/FreddieOliveira/efe850df7ff3951cb62d...) It's also very easy to hookup a Bluetooth controller + [cheap dock](https://aliexpress.com/item/1005003527044516.html?algo_exp_id=4f6fc362-4480-40a6-9a09-2e4621f58e5b-9&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2212000026177180267%22%7D https://aliexpress.com/item/1005003527044516.html?algo_exp_i...) (not supported on all models but Samsung, Motorola and Huawei do usually have pretty good support) and use them for emulation purposes as well. How capable? An Samsung Galaxy S9 (from 2019) will be able to emulate the following systems: - Gamecube (up-scaling in light games) - PS2 (fractional (e.g 1.5x) up-scaling in light/medium games) - PSP (up-scaling in most games) - Dreamcast (up-scaling in most games) - PSX (up-scaling in all games) - N64 (up-scaling in all games) IMHO a far better solution (both from a cost and environmental perspective) than a Playstation or SNES Mini console. Added bonus is the lower power consumption that it's very easy to take with you if you're travelling :)

lizardactivist 4y ago

Recycling and buying renewed or refurbished phones is good, but the fact that many phones are unsupported after three or sometimes even two years is a problem. Qualcomm has been a big culprit in this for many years now. They refuse to support their chipsets for too long, because they can reduce expenses not having to maintain them, and more importantly they make more money selling more chipsets to manufacturers.

a-dub 4y ago
this is correct. there ought to be a law where if hardware is bound to software, and the software goes out of support in a way that renders the hardware useless, then it must be open sourced. notably post qualcomm pixel phones from google have five years of guaranteed updates. (pixel 6 and above) apple seems to also do a good job of keeping up software updates for many years. (8+ for some iphones iirc)
- kevincox 4y ago
  I would even be happy to see required labeling for how long a product will be supported for. Just like we have energy usage guides, mass or volume listed and nutrition labels it should be mandated to label how long a product is supported for. If Cloud services are shut down or security vulnerabilities are unpatched in that timeframe you have to give full refunds/recalls and/or get slapped with significant fines. It is getting better with companies doing this voluntarily (at least the companies that do an ok job with support) but standardized labeling and required promenance would be invaluable.
- david_allison 4y ago
  Samsung recently moved to 4 years of updates (with 5 on some flagships): https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-galaxy-os-upgrade-one-ui-android-unpacked-2022/ https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-galaxy-os-upgrade-one-ui...
- gst 4y ago
  > notably post qualcomm pixel phones from google have five years of guaranteed updates. (pixel 6 and above) 5 years of security updates. Still only 3 years of guaranteed Android version upgrades: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705 https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705

lupire 4y ago

The ody clearly contradicts the headline: > There are an estimated 16 billion mobile phones worldwide - and in Europe, almost a third are no longer in use. So that's 5B total, not in 2022. Then the article goes on to conflate "hoarded at home" from "trashed".

kurthr 4y ago
I was gonna say... "Wow, we throw away 3x more phones that are sold every year!". To be clear 1.35B mobile phones shipped in 2021. That makes the problem (with a 3 year replacement) about 10x smaller than described. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/samsung-led-smartphone-shipments-for-2021-beating-out-apple-research-says/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/samsung-led-smartphone-ship... If you'll take that liberty with a headline, why should I trust the rest of the reporting? There's a problem, but not what is described.
permo-w 4y ago
a third in Europe, not a third of the total

crazygringo 4y ago

Honestly, I find it really hard to get worked up about cell phone e-waste in the grand scheme of environmental issues. People seem to confuse the cost of something new with the harm in throwing it away -- they get upset about $250 AirPods not getting recycled, while they don't give a second thought to throwing away a couple pairs of $1 AAA batteries, when it's about the same level of landfill impact. Or in this case, they think there's something wrong with throwing away a 5 oz (140 g) cell phone, but don't feel particularly bad when they finally dispose of an old 50 lb (22 kg) air conditioner -- or a 3,000 lb (1,360 kg) car. (Using these numbers, one car is the same mass of material as almost 10,000 phones.) Putting it into perspective, cell phones are nothing. There's more glass used to make a jar of peanut butter, and you throw away more plastic after a family-sized Chinese takeout meal. And yes if there are precious metals inside that can be recovered, then let's recover those -- but only if it's economical. Because that's a pure question of economics. We don't need to be "virtuous" -- if markets really think the metal is going to be that valuable because we're going to run out, then they will pay you accordingly handsomely for your old broken phones. But it doesn't seem like we've reached that point yet, because nobody's paying anything.

plzbo 4y ago
To me this seems to be a case of whataboutism. Just because there are worse things to do environmentally speaking does not mean that this is not a problem.
- tormeh 4y ago
  We should focus our efforts where the impact:effort ratio is the most favourable. This doesn't seem particularly productive.
  - plzbo 4y ago
    This is true of course, but we shouldn't discard any attempt to improve the situation, just because there are bigger fish to try.
    - 4y ago

CamelCaseName 4y ago

Where is the true source of this statistic? The article cites WEEE forum, but taking a look at a WEEE forum blog post on the topic [0], it says: > Experts expect roughly 5.3 billion mobile / smartphones will drop out of use this year. Who are these experts? Where are these numbers coming from? Maybe I'm missing it, but no one is cited for the stat. [0] https://weee-forum.org/ws_news/of-16-billion-mobile-phones-possessed-worldwide-5-3-billion-will-become-waste-in-2022/ https://weee-forum.org/ws_news/of-16-billion-mobile-phones-p...

tuatoru 4y ago

Well, that answers a question I had. To power the world on PV, we need to make about 2 billion panels a year. My question was "I wonder how many cellphones are made per year?"

esturk 4y ago

A public campaign can be created to increase people's involvement such as the Olympics. Both the Tokyo Olympic Medals[1] and to a lesser degree the Rio Olympic Medals were made from recycled electronics. The interesting part about the Tokyo 2020 Medals was that it was done through a public donation effort. All it took was less than 50,000 tons of junk devices. Now just imagine how many precious medals are wasted according to the article with 74 million tons a year! [1] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/feb/08/olympics-medals-recycled-gadgets-electronic-waste https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/feb/08/olympics-medal...

Waterluvian 4y ago

This is like the moronic replacement of plastic straws in Ontario. The paper straws work for many drinks but for some, like Iced Capps, they disintegrate half way through the beverage. The frustration is that they’re making life stupider in order to harness a drop in the bucket of change. Go clean up the fishing industry’s colossal waste first.

tehjoker 4y ago
generally the idea is to do tiny things that people hate so they a) feel like something is being done and b) don't actually impact industry or make people want to do more to impact industry that's because we're not allowed to actually impede wealth accumulation
- WWLink 4y ago
  It's kinda genius because then when the regulations are proposed that would actually make an impact in the industry, the company leaders can be like "see? This is just virtue signalling like those awful paper straws! And we'll have to pass the costs on to you, our customers! You don't want that, right?"
thrown_22 4y ago
And the fact 95% of all plastic ocean waste comes from 10 rivers, 8 of which are in Africa.
- jwolfe 4y ago
  I think you're specifically referring to plastic waste in the ocean. This number is not at all accurate in terms of total plastic waste (including landfills, etc.).
permo-w 4y ago
why do we even need straws in the first place? just stop bothering with them at all
- 4y ago

recycledmatt 4y ago

There are serious problems e-scrap recyclers are looking at, but this is repeating old statistics, and has no clue of what the industry is facing. A decade ago, it was all about what we would do with CRTs. Five years ago, it was that the value of circuit boards was dropping and lcd mercury containing materials. Now, it is what will happen with all these batteries and the percentage of plastics by weight of the pounds handled are going up significantly. CRT glass or mercury capacity is not an issue any more. The stream changes rapidly, and recyclers adapt.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

Unfortunately the amount of recoverable material from a phone is negligible. It’s very difficult to recycle phones because first you have to remove the battery.

dymk 4y ago
Is it? The process for recycling batteries is to shred them and then perform "industrial process" to separate out the useful stuff, basically like refining raw ore all over again. The phone, outside the battery, might contain a little bit of plastic and metal, and some glass. Seems the battery is the bulk of what one would want to recycle.
- Overtonwindow 4y ago
  You absolutely cannot shred a lithium battery. It will explode. Any type of lithium battery and electronic makes it more expensive to recycle. They must remove that battery first. It would be super simple if we could just throw everything into a shredder, but lithium batteries are different.

deleted 4y ago

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keepquestioning 4y ago

Why cant the waste phones be put into a massive cluster to work on protein folding or hard problems?

Gigachad 4y ago
Because old compute hardware is close to useless. After a few years, the power cost exceeds the cost of recycling and producing new hardware.
dymk 4y ago
Same reason people don't mine Bitcoin on CPUs anymore

ge96 4y ago

I recently bought a vintage computer (made in late 90s). It's cool but useless today. I always think about that with regard to e waste like "it could be used" but no not really. Maybe you could power a bunch of them/distributed compute but is it worth it. "Give them to a poor country" like they want your old tech? Idk I think about minimalism eg. have only one computer vs. a few that each get used a few times. But that's the beauty of having the ability to buy things too.

akomtu 4y ago

Think of this e-waste as a giant wheel made of phones and other electronics: this wheel gets pushed by billions of users, driven by the need to look better than others, and the electricity the wheel produces is the profits that feed the rich, who are driven by greed. Both users and owners are blinded by desires. The by-product of this curious process is waste all over the planet.

kornhole 4y ago

We need modular phones like the frame.work laptop. This is possible with some limitations, but Apple and others will not make as much money. Battery replacement is a no brainer, but why can't the camera and other components be a module to remove and replace when a new one is released?

seba_dos1 4y ago
My Librem 5 has a replaceable battery and two replaceable modules on M.2 cards: 4G modem and WiFi/BT card.

josephcsible 4y ago

I've only ever thrown away phones for two reasons: 1. Part of the phone (e.g., the battery, charging port, or screen) stopped working, and getting it repaired either was impossible or cost as much as buying a new phone did. 2. The manufacturer stopped releasing software updates, and due to things like SafetyNet, locked bootloaders, or lack of open-source drivers, nobody else could step up to do so. If both of those problems went away, I can see myself using the same phone for a decade or more.

MisterSandman 4y ago
What phone are you using that got 10+ years of updates?
- josephcsible 4y ago
  I'm not currently using such a phone. If I implied that I was, I didn't mean to.
cute_boi 4y ago
I think battery is the major problem. I had a s6 and I wasn't able to replace it battery. And, I had to dump it after only 3 years of purchase. Personally speaking, companies must be forced to provide official battery for at least 5 years.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

Lovely. These companies should skip a year rather than brag about using 20% recycled aluminum.

stainablesteel 4y ago

for those who might not be aware, recycling rare earth metals from various forms of tech is actually a geopolitical struggle of the west china has the largest and only deposit of a high number of rare earth metals on the planet within their borders, any kind of political discontention could mean being cut off from this supply. and they're invaluable for multiple layers of modern society. if you feel this isn't a problem, just remember europe didn't feel being reliant on russian gas was a problem either and they're going to be feeling the repercussions this winter

footlose_3815 4y ago

[dead]

WirelessGigabit 4y ago

I wonder how many phones are thrown out because of software that seems to get more and more resource hungry because they’re developed by people who don’t realize the cost of every library they import. Think about it, from a normal usage perspective, the iPhone gotten a LOT faster, but apart from camera improvements is the mail app really better? Or Messages? Facebook? No. In fact a lot of apps just have gotten slower. Not to mention the slowness because of all the timeout my iPhone hits because I use Pi-hole.

t0bia_s 4y ago

I have my old phones in box. I will try fix them when I find same devices elsewhere. Also... There are no motivation to bring old phones somewhere for recycling. At least in my country only one motivation was to bring old phone to store for having ridiculous sale for new one. That is, for me, still consumerism over recycling.

nokya 4y ago

I have five smartphones in my drawer, all in perfect condition except for a battery that won't hold more than two to three hours. I wish I could at least buy battery replacements and change it easily. The other problem is the selling cost: whoever I will sell the smartphone to will very likely not keep it and sell it right away to someone else in need, at a higher cost. I may be alone on this but that disturbs me to the highest level and I end up keeping them in my drawers.