War declared on world's growing e-waste crisis

Tis easier to get gold out of crushed rock, almost impossible out of crushed plastic.

Yet there is 100 times more gold, for example, in a tonne of mobile phones than in a ton of gold ore

Its called waste for a reason.

Stop changing your phone before it breaks, same with car, they are not getting better, and that reduces waste.

@Will Goode

I cannot agree with you. Technology does get better. All the enhancements made are clearly a step up from the previous ones. However, the issue is that we really do not use many of the enhancements that each upgrade comes with. I have to admit that I have contributed to this waste. I typically upgrade my phone to the next available Note every year. However, I almost exclusively rely on the exact same features for the past 4 or 5 models. That means I have wasted a lot of money as I do not take advantage of these new features.

Even my car is considered a waste to me. I have all these buttons and features; however, aside from my X Drive and adaptive lights, I don't really use any of them at all. If it were not for my wife and now children, I would honestly have stuck with my car from High School.

How about making phone companies taken their own products back? I think it should be upto the maker the destroy what they made

A large bulk of this electronic waste goes to India, where labour and life is cheap, I say life, there is a lot of nasty chemicals that make up these white goods, they strip them down into individual components and they recycled, some of the chemicals are toxic, the people that strip them down get exposed to there harmful dust etc.

If manufacturers made things to last, we wouldn't throw them out. Of course, they'd probably go out of business, too. There's a reason for designed obsolescence.

I've kept every cell/smartphone I've ever owned. Just 5. I use them until I absolutely have to get a new one.

They're in a little box in my closet. Once they figure out a good way to recycle these, I'll do that.