Hot Days, Bright Nights, and That Drawer Full of Old Tech

Summer in Columbus has a personality of its own. One minute it’s a breezy evening at a festival in the Short North, the next it’s pushing 90 before noon and your phone feels like it’s sweating right along with you. Between concerts, food trucks, and packed patios, the city comes alive this time of year—and most of us are too busy enjoying it to think about what’s quietly piling up back home.

You know the spot. A drawer, a closet, maybe a box in the basement. Old phones, outdated laptops, chargers for devices you don’t even remember owning. It turns out almost everyone has one—about 9 out of 10 Americans admit they’re holding onto unused electronics. And when you add it all up, that’s estimated to be over a billion unused devices sitting around the country.

That’s a lot of hidden tech.

And here’s where it gets interesting. Those forgotten gadgets aren’t just clutter—they’re surprisingly valuable. A single smartphone contains more than 60 different elements, including tiny amounts of gold, silver, and copper. In fact, globally, the raw materials locked inside discarded electronics were valued at around $91 billion in a single year—and most of it was never recovered. It’s basically a modern-day treasure chest… just one that’s usually buried under old instruction manuals and tangled cords.

Meanwhile, the bigger picture keeps growing. The world generated about 62 million metric tons of e-waste in 2022, and it’s on track to climb steadily as we upgrade devices faster than ever. What’s wild is that less than a quarter of that gets properly recycled. So while tech keeps moving forward, a lot of the old stuff gets left behind.

Even here in Columbus, where sustainability efforts are gaining real momentum, the challenge is still about awareness and action. Every resident generates around 9–10 pounds of waste per day, and a significant portion still ends up in landfills. Electronics are only a small slice by volume, but they account for a huge percentage of toxic waste

due to the materials inside them.

But there’s a flip side to all of this—and it’s pretty encouraging.

Recycling electronics doesn’t just keep waste out of landfills, it also saves an incredible amount of energy. Recycling a million laptops, for example, can save enough energy to power thousands of homes for a year. And those old phones we forget about? Americans alone throw away over 150 million of them each year, even though many could still be reused or their materials recovered.

So back to summer.

There’s something about this season—maybe it’s the longer days or the reset that comes with it—that makes it easier to finally tackle the things we’ve been putting off. Cleaning out a garage between festival weekends, reorganizing the office while things slow down, or just making space for something new. It doesn’t have to be a big project. Sometimes it’s just opening that drawer and deciding you don’t need to hold onto five generations of charging cables.

That’s where we come in. At AVAY, right here in Columbus, we see this moment all the time. Someone shows up with a small box of old electronics and leaves with one less thing on their mind. Businesses do the same on a larger scale—clearing out storage rooms, upgrading equipment, making sure everything is handled securely and responsibly.

No pressure, no overthinking it. Just a simple step that makes a real difference.

So whether you’re heading out to your next summer event or staying cool indoors during the next heat wave, take a second look at what you’ve outgrown. You might be sitting on a mini gold mine (literally), and at the very least, a chance to clear some space.

And honestly, that might be the best summer feeling of all.