How mobile phone recycling helps the environment

It is interesting how mobile recycling can help our environment apart from the possibility of getting cash for mobile. A mobile phone is a complex electrical and electronic device which can undertake very complex calculations in one second.

A mobile phone set will normally be comprised of the handset, a battery and a charger. These days it must be acknowledged that we get more items in the mobile phone set such as hands free, etc. The handset itself consists of the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), microphone, casing, antennae, keypad and Printed Circuit Board (PCB).

Many of us use mobile phones for communication. These devices have in fact now become such an important part of our lives that we can hardly let them out of our hands. Modern mobiles are capable of many functions such as free instant messaging, file sharing and many multimedia functions. But in the same way that mobiles can be useful, they can also cause harm to our environment if we do not start or continue to embrace mobile phone recycling.

It is believed that there are more than 90 million mobile phones in circulation in the United Kingdom. These could weigh up to 12 thousand tonnes, about 5 times the weight of the London Eye. Of this 90 million mobiles in circulation only between 9 and 18 million are currently being recycled. This means that more than 80 percent will slip in the UK’s landfills and waterways if a mobile recycling company does not have them.

Our much loved devices contain the following harmful chemical substances which can potentially harm our delicate ecosystem and fauna if we do not recycle mobile and they end up being wrongly disposed off in our landfills or waterways:

Cadmium: This chemical substance can be found in phone batteries. A single phone battery contains enough of this substance to contaminate 600 thousand litres of our drinking water when it enters the UK’s waterways. Cadmium is however being phased out in newer phone batteries.

Lead: Lead is a deadly substance which can affect the immune and nervous systems. Lead is used to solder components in a mobile phone. It can also cause serious damage to children’s brains.

Brominated flame retardants: These are used in mobile wiring boards and plastic cases. They have been linked to cancer, liver damage as well as damage to the neurological, immune and endocrine systems.

Beryllium: Beryllium can cause serious lung damage and is produced when mobile phones are incinerated in waste plants. This toxic substance is used in phone contacts and springs.

Like many other inventions, mobile phones can be potentially harmful to the environment. The greater harm however is done when mobile phone users indiscriminately dispose of their old, used or unwanted devices in an environmentally-unfriendly manner.

In order therefore to eliminate or minimise this harm that these useful devices can cause, it is important to recycle your used mobiles. And there’s yet the exciting bit. Did you know you could make money when you recycle your old mobile? You can simply sell mobile phones to any of the several mobile recycling companies in the UK.