THE timing could not have been better. As a fire raged at an electronic waste facility near Paisley, campaigners piled up electronic waste outside the Scottish Parliament as part of a push for stronger circular economy legislation.

They are seeking to put pressure on MSPs to include plans for recycling minerals and metals such as copper, cobalt and lithium, which are used in phones, laptops and renewable energy infrastructure.

Any residents of Paisley and the surrounding areas who didn’t have concerns about Scotland’s ability to deal with electronic waste before Sunday night will surely be pondering it now, especially after the Fire Brigades Union in Scotland said it had “concerns about the speed of the introduction of technology and the regulations around EVs, battery storage etc”.

The weekend’s fire came hot on the heels of another at a battery recycling centre in Kilwinning in April. Questions must be asked – and answered. Consideration should surely be given to relocating such facilities further away from residential areas.

Friends of the Earth Scotland didn’t have to look far for donations to stage their Holyrood stunt – they simply asked around, and plenty of people offered up old phones, monitors and cables. Had they asked me, I could have contributed a few items myself from the last couple of months alone.

As summer festival season approaches, I’ve been digging out my power banks and testing my chargers. I found that a travel adapter I bought less than a year ago (£17 directly from Samsung) has given up the ghost, as has a connector (£2.50 from Poundland) that was needed to use headphones with the same device. A bumbag-sized power bank now provides less than a 10% boost to my phone’s charge, and becomes alarmingly hot while doing so.

As consumers, we want to make the right choices – to save both money and waste, and also to avoid inconvenience or even potentially dangerous situations. The effectiveness of, say, a 10,000mAh power bank could make all the difference to someone who gets lost or disorientated, or finds themselves without cash or a map when these are urgently required. But where is the regulation for such devices, and as consumers are we too willing to accept that we must upgrade our tech on a regular basis, and try not to think too much about what happens to the old stuff?

READ MORE: Campaigners pile electronic waste outside Holyrood ahead of circular economy vote

It’s great that sustainable shopping has become a fashionable choice for young folk and online platforms allow even the bulkiest of unwanted electronics to be resold or given away locally rather than binned.

But it’s ironic that these platforms are mostly accessed via smartphones, which a cynic would suggest are designed to become obsolete, not just because of advances in technology but also because elements such as batteries degrade over time and cannot easily or cheaply be replaced.

I recall the days when I would head off on my travels with spare phone batteries and my dismay when I later learned that all new phones were sealed. The salesman mentioning something about waterproofing. Tell that to my current phone, which screams at me if there’s a trace of moisture in the socket when I plug it in to charge.

The smartphone-dependency genie cannot be back in the bottle, but digital solutions can end up creating new problems. I noted with interest that National Express, in an email about a festival bus service, urged travellers to print out their tickets, rather than rely on their phones after five days of living in a field.

READ MORE: We need less stuff. Here's how to cut Scotland’s material consumption levels

More often these days we are bossily told to help save the planet by not printing, something that wouldn’t even occur to those (the majority, surely) who have no access to home printing facilities anyway.

Personal printers are no longer the norm because there’s less need for them but also because the cost of ink cartridges is ridiculously high. The EU has been working to address unsustainable practices by printer manufacturers, such as the use of chips that prevent compatible refillable cartridges being used instead of expensive branded ones.

Last year, it also adopted new regulations that will require smartphones to have replaceable batteries by 2027. If the battery removal requires a specialised tool, they will be required to provide those free of charge.

Of course, manufacturers might still produce impenetrable devices for non-EU markets (ours included, alas) but the hope is they will make all of their products easier to repair. They will undoubtedly find new ways to fleece us but let’s hope they compete to earn the “most sustainable” badge of honour.

We all have a role to play in reducing waste but it’s not easy when nothing is built to last. And to add injury to insult, even once you’ve disposed of the junk it might end up coming for your lungs.