This year total worldwide mobile phone ownership is set to top more than three billion. That’s approximately one handset for every two people on the planet and with growing demand in the developing world the market shows no sign of reaching saturation.

Latest industry show that each phone sold has an average shelf life of just 18 months, which means in just over three years time there will be around six billion redundant phones cluttering up desks and cupboards across the globe.
 
Laid end to end that’s enough to stretch 15 times around the equator or almost to the moon and back with the majority of them finding their way into rubbish bins and ultimately into a hole in the ground. A very big hole in the ground, for if they were all were buried together it would take a pit the size of Glasgow city centre to bury them all.

All this adds up to one big environmental headache and the industry hasn’t exactly been in a hurry to grasp its responsibilities. In short its reputation for environmental awareness is probably among the worst of any industry sector. Only last month the European Commission tightened up legislation to make the whole mobile supply chain clean up its act, and start recycling more.

For the biggest threat to the environment comes not from paper, bottles and cans it comes from electrical goods like mobile phones.

Land filling or incineration of mobiles unlocks dozens of extremely unpleasant substances which unfortunately are critical to making these phones work.
 
Mobile phones and their accessories, like chargers, contain major concentrations of toxic heavy metals including; cadmium, lead, nickel, mercury, manganese, lithium, zinc, arsenic, antimony, beryllium, and copper.

Metals like these are bad news for the environment as they don't degrade. When land filled in time these metals will seep out in to the water table and the food chain, potentially causing serious health problems. Poisoning by heavy metals is associated with damage to the nervous system, reproductive and developmental problems and a number of cancers. Cadmium for instance is the seventh most dangerous substance known to man.

The health effects of lead poisoning are well known. If it is absorbed into the bloodstream in sufficient quantities it causes serious liver and kidney damage in adults and neurological damage in children.

Nickel and mercury are toxic and are also classed as hazardous. All nasty stuff.

But simply throwing away a redundant phone doesn’t just create a potential health hazard.

Bring the overall loss of valuable resources into the equation and the story just gets worse.

If recycling doesn’t take place these materials are lost and new raw materials need to be mined to replace them. The production of these raw materials and the goods made from them means more environmental damage through mining, transport, water and energy use.

But this environmental nightmare can be easily avoided. Advances in recycling technologies mean 100% of a mobile phone is recoverable. It can either be reused in a new phone or recycled into something else.

Useful parts include aerials, battery connectors, printed circuit board, integrated circuits, keyboards, LCD screens, lenses, microphones, and speakers, they can all be dismantled refurbished and reused in a new phone.  Parts that can’t be reused can be recycled. Recycling of metals saves 60-90% of the energy required for mining and extracting metal from ore.

Every piece of metal in a mobile phone can be successfully recycled. Smelted and separated; aluminium, ferrous metal and copper fractions can all be sold on for reuse. These metals salvaged from mobile phones can end up, in everything from new roofs to ski bindings. Even the outer plastic body is useful, granulated and used in traffic cones and plant pots.

So the industry has the ability to turn its image from waste provider to waste recycler. With sales of mobile phones continuing to rise at an alarming rate it remains to be seen if becoming more sustainable is a priority.