The EU also longs for the first mobile phones whose battery is easier to replace

Many readers will remember those years when changing the battery of a mobile phone was a matter of two seconds: easy, fast and cheap. This replacement gave the terminal a second life avoiding being thrown away and exchanged for a newer one. According to a report published by the French media Het Financieele Dagblad (FD), the European Union longs for those times and wants today's mobiles to be as simple to repair as the old ones. The current smartphones, although they are more efficient and useful than the others, are more difficult to repair. To change a simple battery it is necessary to go to a specialized store or the brand itself and have a technician change the part for another. If we do not follow this process, we may lose the device warranty or, even worse, break the phone further. This difficulty means that it is more profitable to buy a new phone with better features and throw away the old one, shortening the useful life of these devices in excess. The result is millions of thrown or abandoned electronic devices that accumulate to the rest of electronic waste that pollutes our planet. The fight against obsolescence program by the European Union is well known. Just a few weeks ago, a measure was passed to force mobile manufacturers to adopt the standard USB-C port in all their new models, so that it is not necessary to change the charger or cable every time we buy a new device. A study revealed in 2019 that in Europe there are more than 700 million abandoned phones in the drawers of the houses, without using them or recycling them, while Europeans continue to buy new mobiles. All this excessive consumption has an impact on the environment, promoting harmful effects such as climate change that we are already suffering throughout the world. The EU is not satisfied only with these measures, it wants manufacturers to be involved with the recycling of their phones. They should provide these spare parts for consumers to easily fix their smartphones and it has been proposed to prohibit the destruction of unsold items so that their materials are used to manufacture new models. Finally, the report indicates that the EU will focus efforts on the more extensive recycling of packaging materials and limit the use of microplastics in products and packaging.