Smartphones Contain Recyclable Materials
Smartphones are everywhere, and several individuals nowadays cannot complete their everyday business operations without them. 198 million individuals in the United States of America alone utilize a smartphone.
People are updating their smartphones at a comparable rate as the cell phone industry, thanks to this and falling initial costs. Presented, the average life expectancy of smartphones in developed countries is approximately 2 years, which is reducing. This implies that thousands of smartphones are discarded daily, and electronic waste is the globe’s fastest increasing waste material. Smartphones tossed out into landfills are an environmental risk due to the chemicals they contain, which could infiltrate into the groundwater supply and impact regional ecosystems and possibly fresh drinking water.
Recyclable Materials that Smartphones Contain
Smartphones are complicated machines and, as such, include several different materials that could be recycled. It is estimated that 80 per cent of a smartphone could be recycled. The most precious materials utilized to manufacture smartphones are valuable metals, like Platinum, Gold and Silver, all of which are included inside the circuit board. A cell phone’s battery also contains numerous valuable items, which could be recycled once they are separated. A mobile phone battery contains a significant amount of Copper and rarer items, like Cadmium. Nickel could also be found inside the batteries of cell phones, which could be transformed into Steel.
Lead, Aluminum, Lithium and Palladium are also found in smartphones. Some of the different parts of the smartphone that could be recycled are speakers, circuit boards, microphones, screws and the LCD screen. Aluminum is utilized in the casing of a smartphone. It is perhaps the most recyclable item. When recycled, it is melted inside a furnace, and the melted Aluminum is placed inside various molds to produce new things. Glass is utilized in the LCD screen of a smartphone. Once recycled, the glass is crushed, melted and utilized to manufacture glass items or used as a replacement material to construct the base of a road and building structure.
Economic Benefits of Recycling Smartphones
One of the vital economic benefits of recycling smartphones is that recycling smartphones can help to recover close to 35,000 pounds in valuable metals. It could also help save 60 million dollars of Gold, Copper and Silver from ending up in landfills. For example, an iPhone typically contains 0.032g of Gold, 0.34g of Silver and small amounts of Palladium and Platinum. Recycling 100 million phones could also save 2 Kilowatt of electricity. It is sufficient electricity to power 23,000 houses for a whole year. Another crucial economic benefit of recycling smartphones is stopping dumping grounds from filling up.
In 2015, the United States produced 262 million tons of waste. Over 137.2 million tons of garbage winded up in junkyards. Between 1990 and 2014, the amount of trash that winded up in dumping grounds decreased, from 143.4 million to 136.8 million tons. A rise in recycling rates and composting caused a decrease in waste in dumping grounds. However, things have changed a lot currently, which has caused a few individuals to wonder whether landfill spaces are at a premium or not. China, in 2018, reported that it would never again accept imports made of plastics for recycling. Thus, numerous communities throughout the United States have cancelled or downsized their recycling programs completely. Plastic bottles, containers, and other types of packaging that people used to put in recycling bins are currently thrown out with the trash. If you like this article you may also like; What is the Most Important Waste Type?