Smartphones are killing the planet
- October 14, 2021
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
No Comments
Smartphones are killing the planet
Subject – Environment
Context – smartphones have a highly detrimental impact on the physical and social well-being of the planet.
Concept –
- Smartphones are typically discarded after an average of two years despite being operational. A McMaster University study found that 85-95 per cent of carbon emissions during this two-year period correspond to the manufacturing phase alone.
- The energy used to build a single smartphone is equal to the energy required to operate it for about a decade. This alone makes smartphones the most damaging of information and communication technology (ICT) devices.
- The iPhone 6s produced 57 per cent more carbon dioxide (CO2) than the iPhone 4s, with less than one per cent smartphones are recycled by Apple and other companies.
- Gold mining for the tech industry is a major causes of deforestation and depletion of natural CO2 sinks in the Amazon.
- Vast quantities of water evaporate in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia, to obtain lithium for batteries that power smartphones.
- Mercury and cyanide by-products further contaminate local water bodies. Discarded smartphones add to toxic e-wastes which then leach into the groundwater.
- Greenpeace, a non-profit, estimated that the European Union would produce more than 12 million tonnes a year of electrical and electronic waste by 2020.
- From 2007 to 2017, around 7.1 billion smartphones were manufactured. A majority of these smartphones are now past their two-year discard period and are now part of the growing global toxic e-waste.
To know about E-Waste management in India, please click here.