Why Recycle Your Mobile Phone?
Apart from making some cash, clearing clutter from your drawers you'll also be doing your bit for the environment
The Sad Facts
Here are a few numbers:
- Over 20 million handsets will be upgraded in the UK this year
alone.
- On average, each UK household is home to 4 (or more) tired,
unused mobile phones - over 50 million phones nationwide!
When upgrading, rejected phones will often be left in the back of a
drawer. Unused and neglected.
What are they Made From?
Mobiles contain a range of materials including metals, plastics and several valuable components - such as silver - which can be extracted and re-used.
They also contain numerous substances which need to be disposed of in safe and efficient manner:
The Cadmium in the battery from a single old phone could seriously
contaminate 600,000 litres of water, enough to fill a third of an
Olympic-sized swimming pool. However, cadmium is being phased out of new
batteries.
Lead - which affects the immune, endocrine and central nervous
systems, and causes serious damage to children's brains - is used to
solder components to the printed wiring boards.
Brominated flame retardants, used in wiring boards and plastic cases,
have been associated with cancer, liver damage and problems with the
neurological, immune and endocrine systems.
Beryllium, which can cause serious lung damage, is used in contacts
and springs and highly toxic dioxins can be emitted if the phones are
incinerated in waste plants.
How are they Recycled?
Most schemes recover and re-use various parts from phones and
their accessories. Parts recovery may include:
- Separate metals recovery (including
precious and semi-precious metals): The mobile parts are ground
up and useful metal content extracted. Metal can be extracted
from batteries too.
- Plastic recovery: energy-from-incineration
is used to recover plastic from components. Outer body plastic
may be granulated and reformulated for use in mouldings.
- Recovery and downgrading of valuable components:
e.g. flash memory devices.
- Re-use of parts: Useful parts include
aerials, battery connectors, PCBs (printed circuit boards),
connectors including gold-coated edge contacts on PCBs, ICs
(integrated circuits), keyboards, LCD screens, lenses,
microphones, phone housings, screws, SIM card assemblies and
speakers.
Many manufacturers have signed up to the Basel Convention
agreeing to cooperate with developing environmentally sound
management to end-of-life mobile phones.
© 2010 Neil Dockar |
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