What's the future for the giant e-waste sculpture that dominated the G7 summit skyline?

Steve Oliver, founder of musicMagpie, says it would be 'criminal' if new home not found for giant artwork exhibited near Carbis Bay recently

UK households have £16bn worth of old consumer tech "lying around" that is probably bound for landfill, according to the man behind a giant e-waste-based sculpture of G7 leaders.

'Mount Recyclemore' received widespread media coverage from outlets including the BBC, ITV, CNN and The Guardian last week after it popped up on a beach near Carbis Bay just ahead of last week's G7 summit.

Depicting G7 leaders including Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel and Joe Biden, the artwork used 12 tonnes of e-waste and around 20,000 piece of tech.

Talking to Computing's sister title CRN, Steve Oliver, founder and CEO of musicMagpie - which commissioned the structure - said his motivation was to raise awareness of the growing threat of e-waste, citing UN figures predicting that the current 53 million tonnes of e-waste generated annually worldwide will more than double by 2050.

Just one per cent of mobile phones are recycled globally, Oliver said.

"It's scary just how little recycling activity happens. There's £16bn worth of old consumer tech items in UK households alone - an average of 11 items that we have laying around," he said.

The biggest competitor to musicMagpie - which bills itself as a ‘recommerce' specialist - is "people keeping stuff in drawers, boxes or under the stairs and just leaving them there", Oliver said.
"I can guarantee that it's three-quarters of the way to being taken to the tip in a few years' time," he added.

"If that happens, at best, it may end up in a normal bin. But actually, there are some really precious metals in a mobile phone - gold, silver and platinum - but equally there's some really nasty stuff - lead, mercury and even arsenic. 70 per cent of the toxicity of landfill comes from the e-waste, and mobile phones are some of the worst examples of that."

Already claiming to be the UK's biggest consumer mobile phone recycling service, musicMagpie last year launched a corporate recycling programme aimed at IT managers.

Created by artist Joe Rush and sculptor Alex Wreckage, Mount Recylemore is currently being dismantled, but Oliver said he hoped to find a new home for the eye-catching sculpture.

"We've had a lot of interest from different people. One thing's for sure, having made the impact with it last week, we want to very much continue that and get it back on display," he said.