A lot of Fast Tech junk Now, Our Devices shouldn't be that Disposable

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If you worried about the impact of fast fashion in the environment, well technology has created a lot of solutions but just like how useful yet problematic fast fashion is, so is fast tech.

Fast techs are basically devices built to be used briefly and then discarded. Small electronic items like a mini fan, an earbud, some decorative lights for special events like Christmas and Halloween, vapes and cables. They're usually relatively cheap, short lived for the most part and practically treated like disposable goods.

Can you count how many earbuds you've bought already? It spoils so quickly and you discard them and get another one. Imagine millions of people doing the same thing, where do you think all those discarded earbuds end up? Same answer for fast fashion clothes, on a dumping site.

We're in the era of technology and there's a consumers culture already set in motion, we are buying more gadgets than ever before. We buy them for convenience or fun, but then we stop using them so quickly. And since they're inexpensive, it doesn't bother people when they have to discard it so they do it so easily. They choose to discard it than to fix it.

This behavior is clearly fueling overconsumption and creating a serious environmental problem.

I'll give you a few numbers just to put things into perspective here. In the UK, the numbers are growing very fast. In the year 2023, people spent about £2.8 billion on all sorts of fast tech gadgets, two years later, in 2025, this valuation is expected to reach £11.6 billion, that’s more than four times as much money in such a short period of time.

An estimate has been made that around 589 million fast tech items will eventually be thrown away or forgotten in drawers. Remember these numbers are just for the UK alone this year so imagine the numbers for the entire world.

By 2022, the whole world produced 62 million tons of electronic waste.

That kind of made electronic waste the fastest growing type of waste anywhere on Earth, so it's a bigger problem than fast fashion just so you know.

The concept of fast tech contributes greatly to the electronic waste numbers we're having today.

You might see these gadgets as very small and even look harmless, what would thousands or millions of earbud do if packed somewhere, you might ask?

It's not just the device but the fact that they are usually made of valuable and dangerous materials.

Inside these gadgets, you can find metals like copper, lithium, gold and aluminium. If you read my previous article on what copper can do to the environment, you'd understand the gravity of the problem we have at hand.

Also, the resources I mentioned which are used in making these fast tech gadgets are limited and difficult to mine from the earth and yet most of the time, they end up in the trash instead of being recycled. That means the opportunity to save them is lost and lost forever.

Many of these gadgets have toxic parts, the cables in them, the batteries that power them and even the plastic casing used can leak very harmful chemicals into the soil, air or water if not properly treated. However because of how cheap they are, we forget that even small electronics can cause big damages to our environment.

The unfortunate thing is that not many are conscious of this problem and those that are, have not always seen this problem clearly. But nowadays, more groups are warning us about it. There was a campaign by Back Market, and they urged people to break the fast tech cycle. They offered an alternative, refurbished devices, repair what we have and reuse the old tech which operates just fine. They have begun ads in places like New York, London and Paris to push this message globally and I hope their agenda continues and the world gets this message.

We're already enduring effects of our bad habits against the environment, we can't afford to include fast tech to the issue.

There's also another group called Material Focus, they now call for people to change their habits, sending a message that just because something is cheap doesn’t mean it should be thrown away and I stand firmly by that. Many of these small devices are nearly impossible to repair and most never reach recycling centers at all.

Thankfully some nations are passing new laws to help make fast tech waste a bit less. The laws are designed to push companies, not just the users, to take responsibility. That is a very good initiative because it's not just consumers that are causing the problems, the producers and the consumers create the problem together. Some of the countries have mandated Extended Producer Responsibility, where companies pay for recycling costs. There's also a push for the Right to Repair, which would make it easier to fix devices rather than replace them.

But the government and better policies and companies following those policies is not enough to solve the problem, individual action matters too. Instead of buying something new, we can try opening a window. We can do that instead of using the mini fan that'll spoil in a matter of weeks. We can choose to either lend or borrow some tools from repair cafés or choose a product that is built to last. I'm not ignoring the fact that it's usually more expensive but not all the time you know.

We can also choose to recycle devices properly when they are out of use. It's a matter of the decisions we all make collectively that'll determine whether we'll live in a better world or not.

We've seen the waste that fast fashion created, I'm hoping we don't keep fast tech creating a problem for us. The culture of throwing things is pretty easy to adopt but the cost it brings is far more expensive and hard to pay

Fast tech does not have to be our future at all, like I said, it's a collective choice and I'm doing my part by not only keeping my gadgets for a longer time but also creating more awareness for it.

Screenshot taken from this website