E-waste reduced by new USB-C regulations

USB-C will be the standard from mid-2024. A common charger will be found compatible with all smartphones, headphones, tablets, cameras, e-book readers, in-ear and earphones and headsets, portable game consoles, navigators and speakers, as well as cable-rechargeable computer keyboards and mice.

Consumers in #UE will save € 250m per year. This change will reduce the amount of E-waste by 11 million tons! This regulation will be applied to all devices in the future which cause significant changes in one of the biggest producers of electronics:

In the fall of 2024, the iPhone 16 will make its debut, which will necessarily have USB-C. Unofficially, however, it is said that the iPhone 15 may already have such a port, although this is unconfirmed information. Some people think Apple will sooner completely remove the physical wired charging connector and allow the battery to charge exclusively via MagSafe than change Lightning to USB-C on the iPhone.

Many cables claiming to support USB-C were actually not compliant to the standard. Using these cables would have had a potential consequence of damaging devices that they were connected to. There were reported cases of laptops being destroyed due to the use of non-compliant cables before. European Parliament Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection managed to standardise this area: