Due to our cautious nature, many of us hold on to our old mobile phones when buying a new one. This may be because we want to have a spare one available, just in case something goes wrong with the new one, or it may just be that we don’t get round to doing anything useful with the old one. Quite often, by the time we come to have a bit of a spring clean round the house, many old ‘spare’ mobile phones have been collected. We may think at this point that the very old phones are worthless, so only bother selling the relatively newer models to a mobile phone recycling site. So what happens to the very old phones? Do we just throw them in the bin? Before we do, there are a few things we need to consider.
Mobile phones and other electronic items that get thrown into the bin, end up as e-waste. Some e-waste is dumped off responsibly, but unfortunately, some gets shipped to developing countries and dumped.
According to a report by the UN Environment Programme and UN University, over the next 10 years e-waste will grow by 500% in India alone, old mobile phones being a significant part of this growth.
E-waste not only has a hazardous effect on the environment, but on health as well. Mobile phones contain precious metals like gold, which people try to retrieve from the e-waste dumps. Unfortunately, mobiles also contain toxic solutions such as lead, mercury and cadmium. Lead can affect the nervous system.
According to Rohan Gupta from Attero Recycling, if recycling is not organised: “Most scrap dealers resort to crude and highly unsafe methods for recycling of e-waste, resulting in severe environmental and health hazards. Some of the processes involve soaking of circuit boards in acid, followed by manual scrapping to extract metals, with the residue thrown into open drains”.
So think twice before throwing your old mobile away. You may be suprised to find that it is still worth something, and even if it’s not worth much, by sending it to a reputable mobile phone recycler you know that it will be disposed of responsibly and recycled correctly.