What say you?

Neil Today – is technology built to fail? And are we throwing away too much technology and harming the planet? Catherine, tell me - how old is your TV? Catherine My TV has just had its fifth birthday. Neil And your mobile phone? Catherine It's about two and a half. Neil So you do like to have gizmos, but not necessarily the latest. Catherine Exactly. Neil Gizmo – nice word. A gizmo is a small piece of technology – otherwise called a gadget. Catherine And of course I'm not alone in buying gadgets from time to time. They actually keep on getting more advanced – so people keep buying new ones. Neil Technology also gets cheaper and cheaper. In fact, many gadgets are more expensive to fix than replace. Catherine And this means that we throw a lot of gadgets away – but how many? Neil See if you can guess: how much electronic waste is thrown away every year globally? Is it… a) 420 tonnes, b) 4.2 million tonnes or c) 42 million tonnes? Cathe...

Energy from sunlight is now providing electricity to Syrian refugees at a camp in Jordan.The Azraq camp is the first in the world to completely operate on clean energy. The money came from the IKEA Foundation, a program that directs IKEA’s efforts to help people living in poverty.The power plant began operating in the middle of May. It currently serves about 20,000 Syrian refugees living in shelters. There are plans to expand the service to all of the camp’s 36,000 refugees by early 2018. Until only recently, people living there only had small solar lanterns to light up their living spaces. They also had very few ways to keep shelters and food cool. In January, Jordan’s power system began providing electricity to some of the camp’s residents. Now, the new solar plant will save the refugee agency about $1.5 million a year on fuel costs. U.N. officials say the savings can be used to pay for other much-needed assistance. Refugee Farhan Nazzal says having reliable electricity gives h...