I’m not proud of the fact that I have eight old mobile phones in a drawer of a filing cabinet in my home office. Admittedly, they constitute a family repository but when you add in one old laptop and two unused desktop computers, that’s a lot of rare-earth minerals in one room of an average family home.
Mobile and smartphones are not even the most hoarded small consumer electronic devices in European households, according to the Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum, an international association of more than 50 producer-responsibility organisations. Headphones, remote controls, clocks, irons, external hard drives, routers, keyboards and computer mice all…