Most UK households have a small fortune in old gadgets merely gathering dust in drawers

As 40m unused gadgets pile up in UK homes, Matthew Field finds big tech firms are not making it easy for buyers to give them a new life

Jessa Jones deftly cracks open an iphone 6S in front of a customer. “Battery issues with the iphone, especially the iphone 6S, are rampant,” she says as she inspects its innards. This is just one of hundreds of Youtube videos uploaded by Jones in her small store in rural New York state, which show her bringing old gadgets back to life.

With more than 125,000 subscribers, Jones and other tinkerers have built up a loyal following of customers tired of spending more than £1,000 on a new phone. “The [smartphone companies] don’t let you know you have other options,” Jones tells viewers.

Repair activists argue that tech firms use techniques that discourage repair, such as screws that need special tools. Their aim is to make sure you buy a new device – and that’s causing problems for the environment.

A study by the Royal Society of Chemistry has revealed there are up to 40m unused electronic gadgets in UK homes. Our country is also one of the worst for “e-waste”, with the average UK resident throwing away 24.5kg (54lb) of electronic junk each year.

Devices such as old mobile phones contain valuable small amounts of gold, silver and palladium, as well as rare earth elements. Six of these, that are used in technologies from pacemakers to hearing aids, could run out within the next 100 years.

Part of the reason for the stockpiles is that recycling electronics is tough to make economical. Extracting value from trace amounts of rare metals is difficult. “Phones are lucrative – but recycling a modern smartphone is a money-losing proposition,” says Kyle Wiens of California-based gadget repair website ifixit. Specialist machines are needed to disassemble phones, while some rare metals are impossible to recover currently.

So most reputable phone recycling firms concentrate on repair. An £800 iphone 8 may still be worth £600 second-hand and while many resale businesses are small or privately owned, the market is expected to hit $52bn (£43bn) by 2022, according to research from IDC. Over the past two years £4.6bn has been spent in the UK

on gadget repair, says warranty provider Squaretrade.

Good news for repair shops such as ismash, an iphone specialist. Founded on the King’s Road in 2013, ismash is a rare high street success and will grow to 70 stores by 2021 from 26 currently, says boss Julian Shovlin. “The whole trend of people retaining their handsets for longer is great news,” he said this year. Other British repair firms are expanding – musicmagpie is the world’s biggest reseller of physical media, and smartphone refurbishment is its fastest-growing sector.

The Stockport-based online firm estimates record sales of £130m this year, having taken the UK resale market by storm and making inroads in the US. “Around 95pc of products we get back into another consumer’s hands,” says Jon Miller, its electronics managing director. “We are always trying to give that product a second life.” When musicmagpie takes a product into its warehouse, it runs 70 checks of all sensors, microphones, power supplies and camera modules. “It’s like an MOT,” Miller adds.

Yet phone repair has been complicated by uneasy relationships between independent repairers, such as Jones’ ipad Rehab, and the biggest tech firms. With phone sales falling, consumers keeping handsets longer is a threat to the corporates’ growth.

Samsung’s operating profit fell 56pc this year, while Apple cited a tenfold rise in people replacing batteries as one reason for a profit warning this year, its first since 2002. While Apple has won plaudits for using renewable energy, according to some in the recycling sector this fails to make up for phones’ environmental impact.

The firm has lobbied against “right to repair” bills in several US states: they aim to force tech companies to open up about how to repair their products, and to sell independent shops the right tools and spares.

“The biggest manufacturers are against us,” says Kaitlin Osborne, a repair shop owner in California. ifixit’s Wiens is unequivocal: “I wouldn’t take anything Apple is saying in good faith.”

This has led to legal spats. In 2018, Apple sued Henrik Huseby, owner of a repair shop in Ski, Norway, for selling unauthorised aftermarket iphone screens. A court ruled in Huseby’s favour, but Apple won on appeal.

Lisa Jackson, Apple vice president of environment, has said the firm aims its products to last more than one owner but that this is not about letting anybody swap in-and-out third-party components. “I don’t think you can say repairability equals longevity,” she said in 2017. “You want to get a point where repairs are minimised.” Apple does run a repair programme, with 5,000 stores worldwide, and is developing techniques to improve recycling.

But Wiens claims some Apple products are almost impossible to repair or dispose of safely without specialist machinery. “Airpods, for example, are not safe to dispose of in a landfill. There is no safe way to

dismantle them,” he says, although Apple does accept them for trade-ins.

Europe is working towards a repair directive, and the UK Government has signalled it could back it after Brexit. Last year, 59 UK repair shops and community groups banded together, with MPS including Sir Vince Cable, to demand similar repair rules.

There have been some changes: Apple has begun accepting phones for repairs that had been altered with third-party batteries, according to memos sent to staff. It has also built proprietary iphone repair robots, such as Daisy, which takes apart and recycles iphones. It can dismantle 1.2m devices each year. In 2018, Apple says it refurbished 7.8m products, keeping 48,000 tons of e-waste from landfill.

Firms such as Apple and Samsung also offer trade-ins that can net users hundreds of pounds if they return a phone for refurbishment when they upgrade. Yet a world of environmentally friendly phone recycling and reuse by big tech firms is many years away.

Until then, it will be up to smaller shops to keep phones in working order.