Every year in Britain, more than 15 million phones are still thrown away and end up in landfills. This equates to about 600 kg of gold and silver with a value of around 6 million pounds. Only 2% of all discarded mobiles in the UK are properly recycled. A spokesman for Umicore, a Belgian company that operates the world’s largest mobile processing plant, said that when 50,000 phones are recycled, just over a kilogram of gold and one kilogram of silver can be extracted from them.
Gold is used on the circuit boards of mobile phones and silicone chips are glued on to prevent corrosion. Silver is used in soldering. Mobile phones also contain trace amounts of other older metals, including platinum. Greenpeace, the environmental group said in a recent statement: “Mobile recycling rates are increasing, but they are still quite low.”
Many of the largest recycling plants are located within Europe in countries such as Belgium and Germany. Umicore, which also processes other electronic equipment, currently mines around six tons of gold each year, which is equivalent to around 30 million pounds. Recently, the recycling industry has received a boost as gold prices hit $ 1,000 an ounce last month for the first time in just under a year.
In Japan, manufacturers are desperate for their old electronics because they desperately need the materials. In the long term, we are likely to see material safety as one of the main drivers of recycling in many countries around the world.
77% of people in Britain now own a mobile phone and are gradually becoming more recycling conscious. The new WEE directive that forces manufacturers to help dispose of their old products is helping to drive up recycling rates. Nokia is advising its customers to recycle at dedicated centers or online.