Low Impact

Australia is apparently one of the most mobile-phone-loving nations out there – 3.5 million are sold a year, and there’s only 20 million men, women and children here! And on average, we upgrade our phones every 18 to 24 months.

That makes for a lot of old, unloved phones.

Now, the easy way to get rid of a mobile phone would be to throw it in the rubbish. From a low-impact point of view, this is the wrong way to go about it. Not only would that make for a lot of material going into landfill, it’s particularly bad in the case of mobile phones.

Mobile phones contain a lot of strange and unusual chemicals in both their circuitry and their batteries (especially older model phones). These include cadmium, lead, arsenic and mercury among others. Once in landfill, these chemicals eventually leach into the soil and dispersed through the environment. Furthermore, mobile phones can contain valuable materials like gold and silver – there’s better uses for these metals than sitting in landfill! So it makes much more sense to get your phone recycled.

In Australia, having your phone recycled is easy. The mobile phone industry runs its own program called MobileMuster, and will collect old phones from nominated stores. Their website describes the recycling program which consists of extracting all the recyclable materials from the circuit board, battery and casing. The Aussie Recycling Program also runs a mobile phone recycling program and partners with a wide range of charities – they have a number of drop-off locations and also a corporate program for organisations. They have an emphasis on re-use of working phones, and recycle those that are unsalvagable.

Of course, the best way to minimise your impact when it comes to your mobile phone is to not to get rid of it. Perhaps (just perhaps!), you don’t really need that new phone just because the case is a new hot pink…

Categories: environment, recycle, reduce