Our broken relationship with electronics

How many phones have you owned in the last ten years? Maybe the non-removable battery died or the device became unbearably slow and it was just cheaper to get a new one. Or maybe it was just time for an upgrade. The new model always seems to have the essential features that were missing from the old version. Short lifetimes, sealed hardware and shiny new designs every year. It’s almost like electronics companies want us to keep buying an endless supply of brand new devices from them.

Short lifetimes, sealed hardware and shiny new designs every year.

But what impact does this have on society and the environment? Each device uses up our supply of rare earth minerals and can require huge volumes of water and energy to produce. While some electronic items are recycled at the end of their lifespan, the majority are not, resulting in 41.8 million tons of e-waste in 2014 alone – with Europe producing the most per inhabitant. As an added bonus, many devices leak hazardous substances such as lead, mercury and arsenic into the environment from e-waste dumps. From high-end laptops to shoddily built toasters that we throw away when we leave halls, this pathway of consumer madness is symptomatic of what is known as a linear economy – extract, use, dispose.

However, a counter movement is emerging that provides a step away from unhealthy consumerism and towards a more sustainable system. Enter the circular economy, where we attempt to keep valuable resources in use for as long as possible by increasing product lifetimes and adopting the ethos of “reduce, repair, reuse and only when necessary, recycle”. This is a particularly exciting prospect for scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, as we are going to need new innovations to bring us products than can both live inside a circular economy and meet the world’s technological needs.

So much can also be done with what we have already. The Restart Project is a London based social enterprise that encourages and empowers people to use their electronics for longer in order to reduce waste. It does this by holding community and workplace ‘Restart Parties’ in which participants come together with repair coaches and fix their electronic devices themselves. Many of us at Imperial will already know the joy of opening something up to find out how it works and repair it. By tapping into this feeling and enabling anyone to achieve it, a grassroots repair movement is being spread. With the biggest annual festival of consumerism once again on the horizon, maybe this year it’s time to step back and let in the spirit of reducing, reusing and repairing.

_The Restart Project will be in the SAF foyer on Tuesday 1st December between 12 – 4pm. _

Come along with your broken laptop, misbehaving phone or anything else to be diagnosed and repaired and to find out more.

This has been co-organised by the Environmental Society and Imperial’s Energy and Environment team.