John,

Americans throw away more than 400,000 cell phones every day.[1]

Not every year. Every single day.

If you stacked these phones flat on top of each other, they would create a tower six times taller than the Empire State Building.

A lot of these phones end up in landfills, where their heavy metals can poison our soil, water and even air. If we want to reduce this electronic waste, we need phones that are durable and repairable.

All rechargeable batteries eventually die, which means smartphone manufacturers, like Apple, Samsung, and Google, can prevent a big chunk of this e-waste with one simple step: Make the batteries in their phones easily replaceable.

Tell tech companies: Let buyers easily replace their phone batteries.
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If kept in good condition, a smartphone can operate for up to 10 years. However, most smartphone batteries start to lose capacity after only two to three years.[2] Glued-in batteries reduce the lifespan of a phone by up to two-thirds.

Our phone batteries need to be easily replaceable without special tools. Making easily replaceable batteries would dramatically extend the lifespan of our smartphones, and reduce electronic waste.

Tell smartphone makers: Reduce e-waste by making smartphone batteries easily replaceable.
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Smartphones are incredible. These tiny supercomputers are among humanity's most impressive technological achievements, both because of their raw power and their ability to be mass-produced for billions of people.

And what do we do with these miracles of technology? We throw them out -- not because they don't work, but because it's too hard to replace their batteries. Smartphone makers have figured out how to make these amazing devices. It would be great if they made them last longer.

Send a message to tech companies: Make smartphones that aren't designed to be thrown away.
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Thank you,

Faye Park
President

1. Justin Smith, Lucas Gutterman, "What is e-waste?" U.S. PIRG Education Fund, April 27, 2023.
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2. Hadlee Simons, "7 years of updates means the Galaxy S25 should have a removable battery," Android Authority, February 4, 2024.
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