Electronics Recycling in the Us Is a Total Mess

pcmag.com:

When Pogo the possum said "We have met the enemy, and he is us(Opens in a new window)," it was meant as a sally in the environmental battle. The age of computing had barely begun, and it would seem the 50 years since haven't taught us much. You can definitely see it in the results of an April 2022 survey from Arris Composites.

Despite 86% of the 1,114 respondents claiming that sustainability is important to them, it's clear from the numbers that recycling is important to people only when it's easy. The average home apparently has four broken or unused electronic devices sitting around, because people can’t figure out how to dispose of them—or just don’t bother.

Here’s a look at the awareness level those surveyed have for electronics sustainability:

It's heartening to read that 58% have at least tried to find a place to recycle their older electronics. But that doesn’t harmonize with their actions.

Almost half have never recycled any electronics. Almost a fifth have just tossed old electronics in the garbage. And three-quarters don’t even know if their community has recycling events that will snap up these old devices.

All of this coincides with how often people are upgrading. The days of people buying the newest iPhone at each release seem to have (thankfully) died, but plenty of people are upgrading phones every two, three, or four years. They're buying new laptops less frequently, probably because they aren’t as prone to breakage.

As Arris notes in the report, anyone living to 100 years old who updates a smartphone every three years will have 29 phones in their lifetime. Compare that to your grandparents, who might still have the same landline phone hanging on the wall in their kitchen.

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