When mobile phones are disposed of, one of the biggest problems caused is the contribution to e-waste.
20-50 million metric tonnes of e-waste are thrown away every year. This includes everything from old phones to TVs and computers.
When old mobiles are not responsibly recycled, they are often sent to developing countries where they pose a danger to the poor. In some countries, even young children are used to take apart old phones to extract the precious metals such as gold and copper which are inside. This exposes them to the dangerous metals inside such as lead, mercury and cadium which can cause serious health problems.
One company in New Jersey in America are recycling e-waste in a safer way. CloudBlue aims to responsibly and securely recycle e-waste from all size businesses. Once the old mobile phones and other items have been collected, they will either reuse them, harvest their components by extracting the valuable parts and reusing them in refurbished products, or recycle them by breaking a device down into its main commodities such as metals, plastic and circuit boards.
The CEO of CloudBlue, Ken Beyer started the company in 2007 with his partner Randy Altshuler. When Ken was asked why they started the business he said: “We got excited about the e-waste space because..It’s a huge problem and people didn’t appreciate how big a problem it was..”