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Comment by staz | Hacker News Reader

plenty or rare earth element https://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobi...

Also plenty of other elements in your smartphone that you wouldn't find in your normal bin

That article meanders quite a bit, but it didn't convince me that the environmental impact from manufacturing phones is a huge concern, just that the price of some rare earth elements will increase as our current supply runs low, at which point we'll create new mines to increase the supply again.

And how much of that impact is mitigated from recycling phones after you upgrade?

As with anything, any bit counts. It may not seem like it makes a huge difference but in general anything that mitigates the culture of consumerism helps prevent waste.

Yes your own immediate impact on global waste is much higher from your kitchen trash than your device purchases. But people buying a new device every year, regardless of what they do with it after, encourages companies to keep producing these products at tremendous rates, which in turn results in far more environmental impacts due to everything that comes with it.

It’s sometimes hard to see the effects beyond the scope of what we see on a day to day basis, but they are absolutely there at the societal level.

This article reports that "producing a single iPhone (6) requires, roughly, mining 34 kilos of ore, 100 liters of water, and 20.5 grams of cyanide." Also, "a billion iPhones had been sold by 2016, which translates into roughly ...37 million tons of mined rock". https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/433wyq/everything-thats-i...

Those numbers are pretty substantial - we shouldn't underestimate the environmental impact of our smartphone and gadget addictions.

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