Dear Readers,

In October of 2000, I became the first person in my middle school to receive a cell phone. A gift from my grandmother, the Nokia had a little antenna and came with a set of four plastic Disney covers (Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, and Donald Duck, if memory serves). I mostly used the phone to call home and play Snake, a game in which you directed a little serpent towards an asterisk of food. As the snake grew and sped up, you had to keep it from bumping into itself, which would mean game over. Thinking back, I haven’t a clue what happened to the Nokia and its cases. Did I give them away or recycle them properly? Or did they just become part of a rising wave of electronic waste, growing as fast as the snake on the screen?

According to the World Health Organization, the world generated over 50 million tons of e-waste in 2019, and recycled less than 18% of it. Electronic waste has been growing at a rate three times faster than that of the global population, and includes everything from tiny batteries and cables to treadmills and copy machines. Cell phones, laptops, televisions, routers, printers, video game consoles, vape pens, thermometers, and many children’s toys also count as e-waste.

However, as with almost all recycling services, different municipalities have different procedures and definitions. In Manhattan, where I live, the NYC Department of Sanitation instructs residents to treat hair dryers, vacuums, stereos, and speakers as appliances and to put them out for curbside recycling. In Los Angeles, these items are treated as e-waste. Check with your city or town to make sure that you know what you can drop off, as well as when and where. (And keep reading for more specifics on electronics recycling.) 

Some of the e-waste that doesn’t get recycled properly ends up in landfills, of  course, but much of it actually makes its way from rich economies to poorer ones through a range of illegal pathways. The items contain valuable raw materials such as gold and copper as well as hazardous ones like arsenic and lead. Millions of children work in this informal recycling (or “urban mining”) industry and face dangerous levels of chemical exposure. 

So, what’s a non-Luddite to do? Recycling matters, but reusing — keeping items in circulation longer — is better. That means logically assessing upgrades (does a slightly newer phone camera make that big a difference?) and then giving away or selling old devices so that they stay in use. Consider buying top-quality refurbished devices instead of buying new. Or think about switching to Fairphone, which is made with some recycled materials and designed for easy repair. Get compostable cases for your phone, iPad, and AirPods. And try these charging cables made with bio-based materials (how cool is that!?) or these portable chargers made with mostly recycled materials. 

But, don’t make any changes until you really need to: The whole point is to put less stuff out there. When the time arrives, I wish you happy shopping! 

– Elizabeth Weinstein, Marketplace Editor