WE ONLY RECYCLE 10% OF OLD PHONES: HALF OF EUROPEAN CITIZENS KEEP THEM AT HOME

While the quantity of electronic equipment on the market continues to rise, Europeans' habits remain unchanged: they choose not to dispose of their old "digital extensions" and leave them forgotten in a drawer. This applies to smartphones, as well as laptops and tablets.

Brussels – Laptops, tablets, desktop computers, but especially phones and smartphones. European homes are filled with old electronic devices: once replaced, 51% of EU citizens choose to keep their mobile phones, perhaps thinking they might need them again someday, or perhaps because they are unaware of the possibility of recycling them.

Data released by Eurostat shows that Member States are far from correctly implementing the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive, which promotes the reuse, recycling, and recovery of such waste and establishes obligations for separate collection, treatment, and safe disposal. From Finland to Italy, from Portugal to Romania, behavior towards our old 'digital extensions' remains consistent. At the EU level, regarding phones, only 11% opted for recycling. 18% choose to dispose of them by gifting or selling them to someone else, while 2% even throw them in unsorted waste.

As for obsolete laptops and tablets, 34% of European citizens decide to keep them at home, and 12% to give them away or sell them. The recycling rate remains the same, at 11%. Older desktop computers are recycled slightly more – 15% – perhaps also due to their size.

It is true that recycling all components of a smartphone is a challenging endeavor. The electronic component accounts for about 20% of the entire device's weight (which ranges between 150 and 300 grams), while the rest consists of the casing (usually plastic), the battery (also composed of valuable and hazardous materials), the display, and ferrous metals, particularly steel, for example, in screws. There are also copper, minimal amounts of gold and silver, as well as iron, nickel, and tin.

In general, according to the latest data released by the European Parliament, the quantity of electrical and electronic equipment placed on the market in the EU increased from 7.6 million tonnes in 2012 to 13.5 million tonnes in 2021. In the same period, the collection of such equipment for recycling rose from 3 to 4.9 tonnes. On average, in 2021, 11 kilograms of electrical and electronic waste per inhabitant were collected in the EU.