Mobile Phone Recycling

ABS-PC 29%
Ceramics 16%
Cu and compounds 15%
Silicon Plastics 10%
Epoxy 9%
Other Plastics 8%
Iron 3%
PPS 2%
Flame retardant 1%
Nickel and compounds 1%
Zinc and compounds 1%
Silver and compounds 1%
Al, Sn, Pb, Au, Pd, Mn, etc. less than 1%

Ni-Cd batteries contain Cadmium, a dangerous toxic and carcinogenic substance. Fortunately modern devices, especially small ones, have moved away from the use of Ni-Cd in favour of Lithium-Ion. Although more expensive they have important advantages such as higher power densities and much lower toxicity. However mobiles can also contain arsenic, mercury and other dangerous toxic substances. The quantity in landfill sites is significant, and considerable toxic contamination is caused by the inevitable medium and long-term effects of these substances leaking into the surrounding soil.

Many schemes recover and reuse various parts from the phones and their accessories. These can be sent for separate metals recovery (including precious and semiprecious metals); this involves grinding down the parts to isolate metals components for recycling. Useful metal content can also be extracted from phone batteries and recycled. Plastic elements of phones can be recovered through energy-from-incineration; some plastics recovered from the outer body of recycled telephones can be granulated and reformulated and can be reused in mouldings such as car wheel trims and printer cassettes. Recovery and downgrading of valuable components, such as flash memory devices can be achieved. 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.

Over the years, however, another end-of-life option has emerged and is gaining popularity. It has become more common for companies to refurbish old mobiles and sell or pass these on to developing countries including eastern European countries and parts of Africa.

Several schemes set up for recycling and safe disposal of mobile phones, most of which seem to be national, are listed on the envocare site (see the Mobiles and Telephones page from the navigation menu). Most are free to you, many of them help charities and some can earn you cash. The schemes typically catalogue the phones, including the IMEI identification number. SIM cards are checked and any found ‘live’ are (or should be) reported back. All the equipment should be recycled in accordance with the terms of current and draft EU legislation. You should be issued with an inventory and Duty of Care Transfer Certificate that transfers the responsibility for safe disposal to the scheme. The batteries should be processed by a specialist reprocessing plant to extract the metals.