Sarah Cayzer (S3), member of the Environmental Action Research Team at Heriot’s (EARTH), attended a Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) event ‘Lightning up Chemistry Week’ at the University of Edinburgh on Wednesday 20 November, which aimed to raise awareness of the rare elements in our SmartPhones, tablets and laptops and encourage more people to recycle them and move towards a Circular Economy. As part of her Critical Thinking course, Sarah had already researched and written a report about this important environmental issue.
Extract taken from Sarah’s report:
“Because we, in general, always want the latest model of a phone, we get new phones, even though our old one is still fine. This means that we quite often just throw away our old phones and other technology. They contain highly toxic and hazardous materials that are unsafe for the environment.”
Sarah was interviewed by the RSC, and talked about the need to delay upgrading phones if they are still working and looking out the old phones that are lying in drawers at home to recycle them at Carphone Warehouse, or Household Recycling Centres in Edinburgh. For more information on the RSC’s campaign, please click here.
You can view the video interview here.
