Can you imagine your life without a smartphone? That could be the reality if people continue to regularly upgrade their smartphones and throw away their old mobile phones.
Why? Smartphones are made up of over 20 different metals, but some of these materials could run out in the near future.
Many of the metals that make our phones smart are in short supply, such as:
- Indium which is used to make the touch screen sensitive to our touch
- Terbium and dysprosium which colour our screen
- Tungsten which makes our phones vibrate.
Some of these materials are short supply because they are hard to find or mine, or have finite amounts, or because they are located in conflict zones.
At the current rate that we are manufacturing new smartphones and electronic devices, we risk running out of some of these materials in as little as 20 to 30 years.
To make the situation worse, for most of these metals there is no decent substitute, meaning that when the supplies get low, the cost of smartphones may increase significantly.
Urban mining is one solution to ensure that we don’t run out of these materials. Urban mining is when metals are extracted from electronics, such as old mobile phones, rather than being extracted from the earth.
In order for us to be able to do this, it is vital that people recycle their old unwanted mobile phones so that these precious metals can be used again.
When you recycle your mobile phone with RE:MOBILE, over 95% of your phone is reused!
So, the next time you get a new mobile phone, make sure you don’t let the materials in your old one go to waste. Instead, send it to RE:MOBILE for recycling.
