No amount of post-consumer recycling can recoup the waste generated before consumers purchase their devices.
Current guidelines state students aged five to 18 shouldn’t be spending more than two hours per day engaged in electronic media for entertainment.
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Guidelines for screen use for students need to take more than just time into account. Sleep, eye health, posture and other wellbeing issues need consideration as well.
A coronal mass ejection erupts from the sun in 2012.
NASA
The most sustainable phone is the one you already own. But if you’re in the market for a new handset, consider choosing one with replaceable parts to avoid having to replace the whole thing again.
Is this machine adding an antenna to the fabric?
Hindrik Johannes de Groot/Shutterstock.com
Fill a tank with water, sugar, and old mobile phones. Add bacteria and stir. Result? Rare earth metals. This is biomining, and it’s the way of the future.
A call to better track manufacturing, shipping and distribution.
Travel mania/Shutterstock.com
Many companies are working to prevent customers from fixing broken smartphones and tractors. By doing so, they’re missing out on an opportunity to build customer loyalty and boost profits.
As electronic transistors get tinier, they approach a point at which they won’t be able to get smaller. How can we keep shrinking our devices, and making them more powerful at the same time? Light.
Gone to waste: not enough of Australia’s obsolete electronics are being recovered.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Australia is among the world’s top ten users of electronic and electrical products. But our systems for recycling the resulting ‘e-waste’ fall a long way short of other rich nations.
Chris Harrison, Scott Saponas, Desney Tan, Dan Morris - Microsoft Research
Displays you can roll up and put in your pocket are routinely touted as the next advance in screen technology. So why don’t we have them in our homes yet?
The microprocessors on this wafer of silicon have transistors measuring in the nanometres.
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As the components in electronic devices are shrinking to the nanoscale, even a single atom out of place can disrupt their function. But this also presents an opportunity to make them even better.