They are often useless gadgets, which we buy online or in brightly colored shops that are full of them; they cost as much as a couple of magazines, but often last less than the time it would take us to read them: they are the so-called Fast Tech, the electronic gadgets that we can’t seem to do without and with which we fill our homes.
USB adapters, wireless headphones, portable fans, LED lights: when they stop working (or when we get tired of using them) we throw them in the unsorted waste, with all due respect to the environment, already tested by the 62 million tons of electronic waste that we produce annually.
On the occasion of the ninth edition of the International E-Waste Day 2026, a study commissioned by the WEEE Forum (the European association of consortia that collect and recycle electronic waste on behalf of producers) and conducted on 10,245 people from 12 European countries (not including Italy) discovered that in Europe 87% of consumers have at least one Fast Tech object and 78% have bought one in the last year.
They cost little, they don’t last long, they pollute a lot
The problem is that when we buy these gadgets we don’t stop to think whether we need them or not (spoiler: 90% of the time we don’t need them): they are cheap, so at most – we think – we use them a couple of times and throw them away. Does it remind you of anything? Yes, fast fashion works the same way: we buy clothes attracted by the low prices, and after a year we change them.
We know well where fast fashion has taken us: a desert (the Atacama, in Chile) that has become an open-air landfill, polluting emissions linked to the production and end-of-life of clothes, microplastics deriving from polyester fabrics. With Fast Tech the process is the same: we buy a lot, we use little, we throw away quickly, we recycle too rarely.
According to the data emerging from the study, 29% of buyers keep the device at home when they have stopped using it, only 27% take it to recycling centers and 19% to store collection points.
The risks of batteries
Compared to clothes, however, small electronic gadgets have an additional problem: in addition to plastic and metals, they are often equipped with electrical circuits and lithium batteries. The latter, in particular, if not recycled correctly and thrown into unsorted waste, can be crushed or punctured by compactor trucks, causing an internal short circuit and causing fires.
36% of treatment plants surveyed in the study commissioned by the WEEE Forum had a fire caused by batteries in the last year.
«A small battery-powered gadget thrown away in the bin at home may seem like a small thing. Multiply it by millions of products and it becomes a serious problem, both for the resources lost and for the risk of fires”, points out Magdalena Charytanowicz of the WEEE Forum.
Conscious purchasing and recycling
The message is clear: we must minimize purchases of electronic gadgets and, if we buy them, commit to recycling them correctly when we stop using them or they stop working. As? Treating them as WEEE, i.e. waste electrical and electronic equipment, and taking them to the recycling center of our Municipality, or leaving them in electronics shops: by law, in Italy those with at least 400 square meters dedicated to the sale of electronic devices must collect devices smaller than 25 centimeters for free, even if we don’t buy anything. If the battery can be removed, it should be removed and thrown into the appropriate containers for used batteries.
