How does recycling cell phones reduce mining of metals?
Cell phones have a number of different metals in them which can be recycled – copper, gold, silver, and palladium. Take gold, for example. If we recycled 100 million cell phones, 3.4 metric tons of gold could be recovered3 – allowing that amount of gold to enter back into production without being mined. Because the mining and processing steps were avoided, 5 .5 million tons4 of loose soil, sand, and rock would not have to be moved and large quantities of waste also would be avoided. Another result is that substantially less fuel would be used, dramatically reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases. Similar calculations could be made for the other metals used in the manufacture of cell phones. 100 million cell phones contain 1600 metric tons of copper, 35 metric tons of silver, and 1.5 metric tons of palladium5.
