When you collect pledges, use some of these interesting facts to help people make good choices around electronic consumption, reuse, repair and recycling.
Overconsumption
The average Brit replaces their smart phone every 2 to 3 years, and less than 9% of these are reused or refurbished products.
We could run out of materials found in smartphones in less than a century.
Indium is a metal used to create touch screens for phones and computers. According to president of the European Chemical Society, the world's indium supply is extremely thinly spread across the planet. It could soon dry up if we continue throwing away our old devices every few years.
Electronic waste
Electronic or e-waste is thought to be both the fastest growing waste stream globally and the fastest growing waste stream in Europe.
The UK is the second largest producer of household e-waste in the world after Norway.
The UK has significantly lower collection and recycling rates for e-waste than other countries in the European region
The financial cost
Electronics contain valuable non-renewable resources including gold, silver, copper, platinum, aluminium and cobalt. When we throw them away without recycling, we are throwing away precious materials. Precious metals in global e-waste has a potential value of $62.5 billion annually.
Find out more about how your mobile phone is powered by precious metals and minerals.
Mining from ore could be 13 times more expensive than recovering metals from e-waste.
The health cost
E-waste contains hundreds of different materials and toxic substances including lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury and flame retardants. These leach into the environment and contaminate drinking water.
The UK is the worst offender in Europe for illegal e-waste exports to developing countries, with most of its waste going to Africa.
The climate cost
Mining gold from discarded electronics creates 80% less emissions compared with mining it from the ground
If everyone in the UK handed in one of their unused devises for recycling, this would save 3.2 million tonnes of CO2. This is equivalent to the carbon savings of 665 wind turbines running for a year.