Why You Should Always Recycle Mobile Phones

Recycle, Recycle, Recycle

Very important. Never ever throw a mobile phone, cell phone or any other type of electrical gadjet into the trash. You should always recycle mobile phones and electrical gadjets. If only you knew why it was so important.

The whole world is on a budget. Yet we have a demand for technology such as in the tellecomunnications industry. But where do you think all the materials needed come from? Do you think we just have an endless supply of resources? Have we taken it all for granted that much and become that complacent? Well that is the world today.

There has to be a realisation. And we need to make a change

You may have seen statistics on how many mobile phones are thrown away every year? And how many new ones are purchased every day? Well here are some interesting facts and statistics why you should recycle mobile phones.

They say on average every home in the US and UK have at least 2.9 unused mobile phones. (That means it's more likely to be 3 than 2) It is estimated there to be around 80 million unused mobile phones in the UK alone just lying around. (130 million in the US) Just lying around gathering dust, never to be used again. Sadly most of these end up so old and never used they simply get thrown away. As is the case with mobile phones when new ones come out. Whats sadder is it's estimated that only 1% of them are actually recycled!

Mobile phones are precious

Mobile phones contain precious metals such as Gold, Silver, Copper, Palladium, Platinum, Titanium and other fine metals on their circut boards that can be smelted down and used again in brand new phones. If you extracted all the gold from 80 million mobile phones and got 0.2 gms out of each. You'd end up with 16000000 gms. Which is 16 metric tons! That comes to a lot of gold and money thrown away and wasted.

Mobile phones also contain toxic materials such as Cadmium, Lead, Coltan, Beryllium and Brominated flame retardants used in batteries electrical capacitors in mobile phones. These toxic materials do not break down and biodegegrade in the ground in landfill sites. They sit there in the ground for decades releasing harmful poisonous chemicals that can get into and pollute the water supply. They say in London over 80 billion olympic sizes swimming pools worth of water could be polluted by discarded mobile phone batteries every year! Up to 600 thousand litres of water can be polluted by one single cadmium mobile phone battery. With Londoners buying more than 1.3 million new mobiles a year that's 820 Billion litres of water that could be polluted if old mobile phones are not recycled properly. And there's a drought on.

Striving for a better future

If mobile phones are correctly recycled it can help by decreasing the minerals such as Coltan, Lead, Copper, Gold etc (and others) from being mined for in in third world countries like the Amazon rain forests, the Congo and Africa where it is destroying the natural habitats for the precious animals and other life that exist there.

Because of the high demand for these types of metals, people who live in these countries are being exploited. Such as young children who are forced to work searching for and stripping mobile phones of the metals. You may have read press reports how these children end up with high levels of chemicals inside their bodies and contract deseases such as asthma and cancer.

That is why we need to make a change! We need to do more to recycle our mobile phones and keep the demand for the metals down. We all need to work together if we our to have a better, brighter future. If we want to use mobile phones anyway.

How to recycle mobile phones

Like most things these days you can recycle mobile phones. Mobile phone recycling has been doing well for the past few years in America and has taken off well in the UK for the past couple of years now also. There are companies formed that have the ability to safely recycle mobile phones. They will even pay you to do so!

Mobile phone recycling companies normally have website you can go on to register with and send them in your phone. They will normally send you payment for the phone in a matter of days. It's all very genuine and legit and it's certainly a good thing. Any kind of recycling is but with what we know about mobile phones and what goes on to make them this definitely is.

Why they pay you & what happens now

The reason they pay you for your old or unused mobile phone is because of the value the phone holds to them. As you know every phone has precious metals inside which can be extracted and smelted down. These metals are then sold back to mobile phone companies who re-use them in the making of brand new mobile phones and other gadgets.

Where to sell and recycle mobile phones

Visit the SellYourMobile official site for a list and reviews of mobile phone recycling sites that you can send in and sell your old or unused or even broken non-working mobile phones to.