Don’t bin your old mobile phone – there’s treasure behind the plastic
Smartphones carry loads of precious metals that are turned into nothing more than waste once the device stops working.
This electronic waste has also become a huge ecological problem worldwide. Each device contains many harmful chemicals such as mercury in the battery, lead in the solder that joins parts, beryllium in battery contacts and electronic connectors and arsenic and silica in the computer chips.
In Thailand, more than 380,000 tonnes of e-waste is generated annually, according to the environmental agency Test Tech. Of the e-waste generated in Thailand, only 7.1 per cent is recycled or sold to the more than 100 waste-sorting sites worldwide, while the rest is buried with other garbage.
In a move to tackle this rising problem, many agencies in Thailand have launched a campaign encouraging people to bin their e-waste properly. For instance, mobile operator AIS teamed up with Waste Management Siam (WMS) last month to encourage Thai League 1 football fans to drop their old smartphones off at any Premier League stadium until May 31.
If they can’t make it to a stadium, fans can simply pop their old device into a box, write the name of their favourite football team on the top and drop it off at the nearest post office.
Silver and gold from the discarded gadgets will be used to create special medals to recognise football clubs’ efforts to protect the environment.
Easy come, easy go
Meanwhile, according to a UK mobile network operator “giffgaff”, most users buy a new smartphone because their old one has malfunctioned or does not support the latest software.
This is where refurbishing companies like Back Market come in. The French company has launched a campaign, urging people to send them their unwanted devices instead of just binning them.
The company then refurbishes these devices, which means they have been evaluated and all necessary repairs performed until they can be deemed “like new”.
“A single refurbished mobile saves 258kg of raw materials,” reads one recycling poster. An adult male African lion on average weighs about 250 kilos.
These refurbished phones can be bought online via www.backmarket.com, though they may not apply to users in Thailand just yet.
A fortune in your hands
Beneath a smartphone’s plastic cover lies a treasure trove of natural resources, ranging from gold and silver to a long list of rare minerals.
Take apart a typical iPhone and inside you will find about 0.034 grams of high-grade gold, 0.34g of silver, 0.015g of palladium and a tiny fraction of platinum.
The device also contains less valuable but still significant quantities of aluminium (25g) and copper (about 15g).
One tonne of old iPhones can yield gold that is about 300 times in value. Gold is used to cover phones’ electronic circuits to prevent corrosion. The same quantity contains 6.5 times the value in silver – a component of various alloys inside the phone.
One million mobile phones can deliver nearly 16 tonnes of copper wiring, 15 kilos of palladium (used in the devices’ electrical circuits) and a range of rare minerals that are tough to mine and refine.
The highly intensive industrial processes involved in mining and refining a smartphone’s raw materials means that on average, making a single smartphone uses up about 3,190 gallons of water – enough to fill a commercial tanker, according to watercalculator.org.
The rare minerals inside a smartphone also have scrabble-winning names such as yttrium, lanthanum, terbium, neodymium, gadolinium and praseodymium.
Yttrium and gadolinium are used in the screen display, neodymium and praseodymium in speakers and headphones, and lanthanum helps make the tiny camera lens sharper.