| > There isn't a lot of toxic material on a modern phone. That “a lot of” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. By mass? By how toxic it is to humans or the environment? This is pretty old and I know the industry has tried to eliminate a lot of them from the phones so I don’t know what the current state is: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-finds-phones-still-contai... Here’s an article about research showing that toxic materials in screens are leeching out even during normal use: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/research-sask-chemi... Finally, the chemical processes involved in the manufacturing of the phones themselves also involves large amounts of toxic materials which is still challenging to manage even if it’s centralized (it’s just an “over there” problem because we outsourced a lot of manufacturing). As for the rest, it’s unsubstantiated hypothetical fears. Really the only risk you actually call out is fires but ignore that, for example, lithium ion batteries aren’t inert either and can also cause fires when damaged. You need to compare and contrast risks correctly, not just worry about hypothetical scenarios and use radiation as a scary boogeyman when it’s actually a significantly more nuanced topic. As I said, if the battery remains useful, it improves the purchase price of a phone to be discarded because the battery can be recovered and resold for another device which improves the story vs traditional batteries that we basically trash after a few years. |
That's the thing, unless we have a very good reason, we should improve things, not make them worse.
Also, the stuff your second link talks about lasts for a decade or two at the environment, and then it's gone. While the fire risk of batteries lasts for a year or so.
A very good recycling program is a way to use make widespread use of those things. A very good protocol for handling them as trash is also one. But just landfilling them in mass isn't.