The worst thing you can do with a broken device is letting it gather dust in a drawer. Especially since there's often a good chance they can still be repaired. — Photo: Florian Schuh/dpa
DRESDEN: The worst thing you can do with a broken device is letting it gather dust in a drawer. Especially since there's often a good chance it can still be repaired.
In a storage room in the German city of Dresden, boxes bursting with old mobile phones, radios, printers and televisions are piled up to the ceiling. But the devices are not bound for the scrapheap. They are waiting to be repaired and put back into service.
Dubbed the Green Technology Project, the shop houses some 80 kilogrammes of old smartphones alone, all awaiting a new lease of life.
"You wouldn't believe how many laptops are thrown away that are actually still good," says IT specialist and shop owner Nico Zocher.
The problem, he says, are the spare parts because with old devices, they often cost more than the original purchase price. That's why Zocher and his team store every component they can get their hands on.
In Germany, more than 1 million tons of old electrical appliances are disposed of every year and less than half of them are recycled, according to the Federal Statistical Office.
Many of the recyclable materials used cannot be easily recovered, says Matthias Mayer of IFixit, a global hobbyist community that shares its repair expertise online.
Anything is better than letting devices gather dust in a drawer but "the best alternative is to reuse them," says Mayer. A discarded smartphone can still be used to play music in your car, for example, or as a starter device for kids.
Old devices can be resurrected
The good news is that old tablets, laptops and audio equipment can often be repaired with little effort. Those who find repairs in specialist stores too expensive can ask for help in repair cafés or similar initiatives.
"Anyone can come and bring what they can carry," says Michel Mazylis, who helps out at repair cafés in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. They open up every few weeks and attract dozens of people bearing broken coffee machines, lawn mowers or radios.
At the reception desk, the device is examined, then volunteers help with the repair. The right tools are available on site, and the success rate is 50 to 60%, Mazylis says.
"The hardware is usually not a problem," says IT specialist Zocher. Smartphones in particular are often discarded because the operating system is too old and many apps are no longer supported on it.
However, alternative operating systems are freely available, at least for Android devices.
Repairs are worthwhile
With old audio equipment, repairs are almost always worthwhile because of the devices' good quality, Zocher says.
A smartphone with a cracked display can be stabilised with a screen protector and even water damage doesn't always means the end of the world, as chances for a successful repair are about 50-50, the IT expert says.
If you want to give it a go yourself, you can find instructions and support on websites like Ifixit.com, YouTube and in countless forums online. But if you think it's not worth the effort you should still never throw old devices in the household bin.
"Our discarded devices do not belong in the household waste under any circumstances; no adequate recycling can take place in this waste stream and, in the worst case, the lithium-ion batteries can ignite and endanger the waste operation," warns Mayer.
Instead, PCs or old cameras can be donated to schools or social initiatives, for example. Non-profit organizations and environmental protection associations also often collect old phones or tablets.
Outside of those options, recycling centres are the right place to go if a device really has no future. – dpa
