More than half of Dutch people keep old mobile phones in a drawer or attic – IT Pro – News

There should be a law that obliges them to pay the current ‘street value’ of a phone, therefore an 800 euro flagship after 3-4 years still a good 400-500 euro.

I agree with you that devaluation is going very fast, but how does your proposition work financially? Where do those 400-500 euros come from? If the manufacturer/shop is going to pay for it, they need to be able to earn that money somehow. This doesn’t seem to work with recycling.
Even reselling second hand won’t work at street value because you always get more when you resell that phone yourself without using the vendor/dealer as a middle man. After all, the intermediary trade must also be able to earn something from it.

It would be nice if phones were built more modularly so that individual parts could be replaced, upgraded, recycled or resold. Preferably to standards so you can swap parts between phones and manufacturers. But the current market is not really ready for that. Fairphone is the only one that can realistically do this. I’m all for legally forcing others to do the same, but I’m afraid 90% of the world wouldn’t want a phone like this if the device got a millimeter thicker. I think such a law is not feasible at the moment.

But recouping half the new price for your phone after 4 years isn’t going to happen right now. I think there are very few products where you get half back after more than half the expected life span (and 3-4 years is still a lot, for most phones that’s the full life span).