Over the past few weeks, we observed Global Recycling Day (March 18), World Water Day (March 22). Beyond the obvious environmental linkages, both are unified in the concept of Circularity. 

How does that work?, you say, with a squint. Well, I thought you would never ask.

Let’s start with Recycling. Recycling is well established in the circularity hierarchy, and most organisations encourage their customers to recycle products at end of life. It certainly is a better outcome to products ending in landfill and should be encouraged in that respect. 

However, if we take e-waste as an example (well worth exploring since e-waste is the fastest growing global waste stream), the headline of the most authoritative source of e-waste statistics, the UN’s 2024 Global E-Waste Monitor, reads that “Electronic Waste is Rising Five Times Faster than Documented E-waste Recycling”. So it doesn’t seem like we’ll recycle our way out of the environmental trouble we’re in, not to mention that in recycling, we lose the time, labor, water (see below), and energy originally consumed to produce the finished product and expend more energy in processing (shredding, melting etc.) to create recycled materials often with lower purity/quality. To be clear, Recycling remains important, but it must be our last resort, not our go-to solution. Reuse and Repair hold more value in a circular system – more to come on these in future posts.

Let’s talk about Water, continuing the thread on electronics and e-waste. I was shocked to read that according to Brunel University researchers a single laptop consumes 190,000 liters of water and a smartphone about 13,000 liters. That’s about 12 liters of water every day assuming you keep your smartphone for 3 years, and about 100 liters every day for a laptop used for 5 years. According to S&P, faced with a drought in 2021, Taiwanese authorities ordered water rationing for about two months – a quarter of the island’s rice planted area went without irrigation, hydropower plants were disrupted triggering power outages and local reports suggest the technology industry – particularly semiconductors – were required to cut water usage by up to 20%. While such far away occurrences and large quantities of water may seem distant and abstract, the link with Circularity is that the longer we use our electronics, the less stress we place on already stressed resources – Water in this case, but the same logic applies to other Critical Raw Materials. Simply put, the longer we use our electronics, we delay that shockingly large “Big Gulp” of water (or materials) that accompanies a new device purchase.

So what should you do, you ask? Read on.

Sakshi and I created FullCircle.eco as a passion project for exactly this purpose – a free tool to store important details of key purchases – old and new and their accompanying warranties. Warranties are a powerful lever to help us use our devices longer — and delay that next ‘Big Gulp’. You can capture electronics, furniture, home appliances, or whatever you consider valuable – to keep products in circulation for as long as possible, a key tenet of Circularity, but also to ensure that we’re not running out and buying new when we could have availed a warranty at no cost. The aim is to have access to the right information at key decision points – most of us toss receipts in drawers or boxes—if we keep them at all, rendering them inaccessible except to a dedicated few. In organising our own box of receipts, we discovered that our bed frame came with a lifetime warranty (a positive surprise), and that a set of lights that we recently paid to replace were within warranty. Big Gulp.

So download FullCircle.eco now (QR code below, or search for “FullCircle.eco” on the Apple app store/Google play store) and organise yourself. The next time you think about replacing a device or some other household item, ask yourself: is it under warranty and FullCircle.eco will tell you — instantly.

Tell us about your #BigGulpMoment in the comments below.

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