Upgrading our mobile phones has get equally arbitrary every bit filling up our cars with fuel when the annoying ding echoes effectually the cockpit.

They're an integral part of our day to twenty-four hours lives, both in work and in our free time. So integral, in fact, that we frequently keep our former phones for a while as a "only in case" mensurate. The problem with this is that 99% of the time, these old phones are merely collecting dust, when what they could be doing is contributing towards the circular economy.

Of course your telephone isn't waiting to exist ready free so it can become an upstanding citizen with potent recycling ideals. An old telephone is worth a lot more in the hands of businesses following the Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE) than it is living a lonely life in your junk drawer.

Allow u.s. demonstrate through the power of graphics:

The life of a phone in your Junk Drawer

Sad-Phone-Recycling

The life of a phone in the hands of a WEEE Recycling Business

Happy-Phone-Recycling

What is mobile telephone recycling?

Can they exist refurbished?

Before your phone gets torn apart and salvaged for parts, it is first decided whether your telephone can exist refurbished to information technology'due south former glory or be sold on straight away as a working handset.

Security tests take place to ensure phones received are not lost or stolen – this is washed by checking the IMEI number (the long code that you often have to mess about with when you're changing you're irresolute handsets). Certain components like the keypad, screen and microphones are tested to come across if they are in total working order. If and so, they can be sold on and used past someone else, all the while staying abroad from your dust collecting hideaways.

Many of the phones that we may consider to exist worthless or backside the times tin can be exactly what another person may be looking for in a mobile – a unproblematic, cheap, functional device for calling or texting.

If they can't be refurbished…

The valuable items are extracted

Whilst many phones that get sent to be recycled are either beyond economical repair, or not worth their ain weight (when used a phone), there is still a lot of value in the parts contained within a handset. Specially when in the hands of a company who knows what's of value, and where it can be sold or recycled.

Small quantities of metals such as platinum, gold, silver and copper tin all be used again in other items. Even the batteries which incorporate high amounts of nickel can be combined together to create stainless steel.

The plastics which brand upwardly the casing for many phones can exist melted down into plastic sheets which can be reused for, well… anything that contains plastic. Your old telephone casing may have be used to ship you downward a diversion on your way to work in the form of a traffic cone. pocket-size earth.

Separating the dangerous materials

In every phone, in that location are minor amounts of unsafe materials like mercury, lead or cadmium, that could lead to the contamination of soil or water if simply thrown straight on a landfill. Many WEEE recycling companies extract these materials and dispose of them in an environmentally friendly way.

Selling or recycling

Once all the small parts of your phone have been extracted and split up past material type, they tin be grouped together and either recycled or sold on. Certain metals like copper tin can be sold for a lot, whilst with others it makes sense to melt them down in order to create something new from them. Whilst the corporeality of gilded in a phone may exist only a modest amount, and certainly not enough for you to create a DIY engagement ring – in large amounts, over a lot of handsets, the small amounts of gold add together up and can all be melted downwardly to make certain items, similar the jewelry you're wearing in your ears or around your finger.

One man's junk

Ane man's junk is another man's treasure, then earlier you decide to throw your next mobile phone straight in the bin, or leave it lying around in your drawer collecting grit, consider submitting it to a company who knows how to get the best out of it! Mobile phone recycling is an important part of WEEE recycling. Observe out about our service hither

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