Top 5 mobile phone recycling facts
One Every mobile phone made contains the same precious metals as wedding and engagement rings; metals such as gold, platinum and palladium. While these are only present in small quantities, if you think about how many mobile phones there are in the UK alone, it starts to make sense to recycle them.
Two There are more than four billion mobile phone users in the world now, out of a total population of 6.8 billion. There were over 75,000 mobile phones in use in the UK at the end of December 2008 which is more than the total population of just over 61,000 and puts us 12th in the world for greatest number of mobile phones in circulation, with China, India and the United States heading up the list.
Three All mobile phones contain poisonous elements that can kill wildlife if left in landfills to contaminate water supplies. These include lead, cadmium and beryllium which are proven to be able to cause damage to the immune system, lung damage and some forms of cancer.
Four Manufacturing one single mobile phone uses the equivalent energy to almost 40 gallons of petrol so working out how much petrol that is for the one billion mobile phones manufactured each year leaves you with a colossal number and a great big dent in our natural resources.
Five Over one billion mobile phones are manufactured each year and these produce around 60 million metric tonnes of CO2, creating a depressingly large carbon footprint. If we recycled our mobile phones we wouldn't be stopping this altogether but we would be reclaiming some of what is lost and it's our responsibility to do so, as consumers.
In conclusion, mobile phone recycling is everybody's responsibility because they are an everyday item that we would be lost and stranded without and as such we can't just leave it to other people to recycle them when the latest model comes out and hope the problem will go away. There's absolutely no reason to put mobile phones in landfills when you know the recycling facts and when you know that recycling just one mobile phone can pay for two bags of seeds that will allow families with HIV to grow vital foodstuffs to keep them alive.
It's everybody's responsibility to cut down the massive carbon footprint that technology leaves and knowing your recycling facts can make a huge difference. There are a lot of charity mobile phone recycling schemes to choose from so why not opt for mobile phone recycling rather than putting money in your pocket?
