Why are you hoarding your old smartphones?
When will electronics recycling become a priority for consumers, government, and business?
It needs to happen soon, given that if you piled the 5.3 billion old mobile devices currently in people’s homes on top of each other, you’d have a 31,000-mile-high tower — one eighth of the distance to the Moon.
(Don't) take me to the Moon
The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum, an nternational nonprofit, estimates 5.3 billion of the 16 billion mobile devices in use today will become e-waste this year. Assuming each phone is 9mm thick (iPhone 14 is 7.8mm), if you piled them together the pillar would be higher than the International Space Station's orbit.