My point is more that I'm holding onto shit for a long time, I actively minimize my e-waste, including repairing my own electronics whenever is possible. The phone I had before this one I kept for 5 years and did a battery replacement on myself, I use computer monitors that were originally bound for an e-waste center. My TV was a broken find that I managed to replace the power supply in and now it works a charm.

Because yes tech stuff eats up rare earth metals like nobody's business, and it's hard to go without them in this day and age, but my reducing my e-waste I'm also reducing my demand for more, doing a small part to make running environmentally and often ethically dangerous mines in less demand also.

I'm all for putting renewable energy production and other infrastructure projects around if it benefits the local population, but Mainers would not see the wealth of the mines and still deal with the inevitable environmental impact of them.