Windows Phone Thoughts: E-Waste Mountains and Techie Cast-offs

"Nearly every time a new electrical item is bought, an old one needs disposing of. But are we doing so properly? Four million phones have been sold this Christmas, which means another four million are probably no longer used. Most are destined for the rubbish bin, with the potato peelings and chocolate wrappers. And like all household waste, they end up in the ground. Teenagers get a new phone every 11 months, adults every 18 months. A total of 15 million handsets are replaced each year. It is estimated that 200 million electrical items per year end up in non-hazardous landfill sites, so there could be six billion items buried across the UK."

To show the problem more graphically, the Royal Society of Arts is building a sculpture which will be several meters tall and three tons in weight to represent the quantity of electronics an individual disposes of in a lifetime. Yup, that's a lot of dead electronics items alright. Are you putting your old Pocket PCs and phones to good use? If you have any usable PDAs that you don't use any more, why not consider donating them to organisations that could really use them, like this project to equip medical staff in Africa and help the fight against Aids? In the same vein, if you have unused mobile phones, why not send them to Fonebak who will repair them and pass them on to developing nations or dispose of them in an environmentally friendly manner. Ebay has also just brought together several technology industry heavyweights in an initiative to promote recycling of old computers etc. So do you recycle your equipment or would you in the future? You know it makes sense. ;-)