Rather than simply binning their old mobile phones an increasing number of people are cottoning on to the fact that they can be recycled.
One solution is for the entire phone to be re-conditioned and re-sold. What may be to one person an out-of-date gadget can be to others a much sought-after piece of technology. Recycling companies will in fact offer cash for mobile phones in order to refurbish them in this way.
Cash for old mobiles can still be in the offing even where severe damage has occurred and a phone cannot be re-conditioned. This is because there is still value in a phone’s constituent parts. Reprocessing a mobile phone involves recycling its parts in three main ways: recovering its metals; re-using its components; and extracting or recovering other parts through treatments such as heating and smelting.
Recoverable metals include both precious and semi-precious elements. One metal that is often found in small quantities in mobile phones for example is gold.
Re-usable components in a mobile phone include printed circuit boards, microphones and LCD screens.
One of the key constituents of a mobile that can be extracted through smelting is a dark mineral called coltan. Once extracted, coltan can be re-used in new mobile phones as well as for a host of other applications such as video cameras.
Other recoverable materials include the plastic casing which, once heated, can be reconstituted into a variety of new mouldings.
Mobile phone recycling is not only about financial gains to the owner however. There are also two major environmental payoffs.
Firstly, the old phone does not contribute to existing landfill and the associated risks of chemical leakage.
Secondly, mobile phone recycling reduces the demand for fresh extractions of minerals such as coltan, thus helping to preserve the landscape and reducing the river pollution that often accompanies such fresh mineral extraction.