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Every year in the UK, more than 15 million phones are still thrown away in trash and end up in landfills. This equates to approximately 600 kg of gold and silver worth approximately £ 6 million. Only 2% of all used cell phones in the UK are properly processed. A spokesman for Umicore, a company in Belgium that runs the world’s largest cell phone processing plant, said that when 50,000 phones are recycled, just over a kilo of gold and a kilo of silver could be mined from them.
Gold is used on circuit boards in cell phones, and silicon chips are glued to it to prevent corrosion. Silver is used for soldering. Cell phones also contain small amounts of other earlier metals, including platinum. Greenpeace, the environmental group, said in a recent statement: “Mobile device recycling rates are rising but still quite low.”
Many of the largest recycling plants are located in Europe, in countries such as Belgium and Germany. Umicore, which also recycles other electronic equipment, currently extracts around six tonnes of gold a year, worth around £ 30 million. The recycling industry has recently been boosted by gold prices, reaching $ 1,000 an ounce last month for the first time in less than a year.
In Japan, manufacturers are desperate to get their old electronic products back because they desperately need materials. In the long term, we will likely see material safety as one of the main drivers of recycling in many countries around the world.
77% of Britons now own a cell phone and are gradually becoming more recycling aware. The new WEE directive forcing manufacturers to help dispose of their old products is helping to increase recycling rates. Nokia advises its customers to recycle at dedicated centers or via the Internet.