Our Green Commitment

The Problem

The UK alone is responsible for around 1.5 million tonnes of electronic waste, and only recycles ~17% of this.
Despite it contradicting numerous EU laws, there are currently millions of tonnes of e-waste being dumped in Africa and Asia every year, causing massive pollution and a danger to the local communities.
Even when our e-waste does not make a long trip around the world, without proper recycling in place, we are loading up our landfills with a toxic mine of dangerous substances. Heavy metals, ozone-depleting chemicals and lead glass are being left to decompose in a landfill, adding to environmental pollution and building up serious problems for the future.
(http://www.virogreen.co.uk/e-waste-recycling-uk/)

According to recent research carried out by Spring, the UK is on course to becoming the biggest contributor to e-waste in Europe over the next three years. The UK produced around 1.6 million tonnes of e-waste in 2019, (that’s around 23.9kg of waste per person!). It’s estimated that 40% of this is illegally exported to other countries to be dumped, where the discarded devices leach contaminants into groundwater and the local area.
(https://resource.co/article/uk-track-become-europe-s-biggest-e-waste-contributor)

With the world becoming increasingly digital and ~84% of the world’s population owning a smartphone (according to world population projections), tech is making a substantial contribution to the problem of climate change with various studies and research highlighting significant values.
Throughout its lifecycle, tech is constantly contributing to climate change. The raw materials needed to produce a smartphone require energy intensive-mining, with a number of the materials being finite. An estimated 85-90% of a smartphone’s carbon footprint is produced during its production process.
Research on annual carbon emissions from smartphone usage estimates a yearly CO2 production of 63kg, from just one hour of smartphone usage per day.

https://infomineo.com/how-smartphones-are-contributing-to-climate-change/#:~:text=Research%20on%20the%20annual%20carbon,per%20day%2C%20for%20a%20year.