On Refurbed, users can buy refurbished electrical appliances – from washing machines to smartphones. “We are the best sustainable alternative in direct comparison to buying new,” emphasizes Kilian Kaminski, the founder and head of the platform, in the ntv podcast “So techt Deutschland”.
Refurbed is currently experiencing a boom. In 2020, the startup was able to triple its turnover to more than 100 million euros. Mobile phones are among the products that perform best: Well over 20 million smartphones were sold in Germany last year – and with them a huge amount of built-in and, above all, valuable raw materials.
60 different materials and 30 different metals are needed to produce a single smartphone. For more and more buyers, this is an argument to use their own smartphone for as long as possible. Especially when individual devices cost well over 1000 euros.
A trend reversal that Refurbed is taking note of. “The advantage of always having the latest device is decreasing more and more,” says Kaminski, who still sees a lot of room for improvement in Europe when it comes to recycling: “It’s a fact that a large part of the used electronics or electronic waste is illegal is taken abroad. One of the big places for this is Ghana, which has the largest electronic waste dump in the world,” he laments.
