9 Feb 07: One more for the moby foby mountain

Today approximately 1.5 million mobile phones were thrown out, recycled (maybe) or otherwise disposed of. That's a statistic entirely made up by me, but it will do fine to make a point.

Everyone seems to have a mobile phone. I have one, and even a spare one somewhere in case it breaks down. Beloved has one, the kids have at least one each. I think there's another in the shed for emergencies.

The irony is, if I ever tried to use one of the spare mobies, it probably wouldn't work. Either the power would have run down, or it would just blink incomprehendingly at me in that way modern consumables have, or talk gibberish in black courier, or fail me in some other way.

Every year the networks encourage us to chuck away our current mobile and sign up to the latest, all-singing-and-dancing model. The minute I walk into the shop, or get the call (on my mobile) I instinctively sense these guys are not interested in discussing the litter mountain or the evils of built-in obsolescence. Their job is to get us to buy, buy, buy, and that involves getting us to want, want, want, and talking about things like the planet and our grandchildren simply puts them off their stride.

When I have used up my perfectly-alright mobile phone it will presumably find its way to somewhere in the developing world - China I imagine. So in that respect I can feel good about being involved in recycling. But what is all this really teaching our children? That there's an unlimited supply of whatever it is these things are made of (silicon I guess), and if you don't have the latest of whatever it is it does, you're just not cool. Last one in the water's a cissy, damn the consequences.