Discarded Cell Phones

psychictv points to a NYT story about discarded cell phones as an environmental hazard. The study mentioned in the article is available online. Every year or so we run a story on paper, disposable cell phones but even these would generate a fair amount of waste.

Comments

Tantalum Capacitors

[bughunter]

I may be out-of-date, but I recall having to tolerate excessively long lead times on Tantalum capacitors because they're all being used to make cellular phones.

There certainly should be some sort of profit in recycling them, especially in the surface mount packages.

Why can't people resell these?

[King_TJ]

I don't understand why so many people are tossing out their old cellphones in the first place?

Every old cellphone I've ever owned, I was able to resell for at least $15 on eBay. (Often times, for much more than that!)

People who don't want to be locked into 1 or 2 year long contracts often buy your "useless" old cellphones, so they can keep them in their vehicles as spares for emergencies.

Radio Shack is doing recovery efforts

[strredwolf]

They're advertizing $50-$100 off a new phone if you trade in an old one.

Re:What?

[qurob]

They make cell phones out of PAPER

Thinking you'd free the landfills up from what phones are normall made of, you just end up adding to the paper waste.

At least you can burn paper.

Coltan

[Draxinusom]

This is even more distressing when one considers that the capacitors in these discarded cellphones are made of an element (tantalum) with an incredibly high cost of extraction in terms of human suffering. The mining of Ta has exacerbated a war in the Congo (which has over 80% of the world's Ta reserves) that has killed more than three million people. See for example What is Coltan? A google search for coltan congo cell phones turns up more.

Discarded cellphones are a goldmine

[jukal]

...and this is very old news:

Unwanted mobile phones are still valuable they contain precious metals such as silver (Ag), gold (Au) and Palladium (Pd), as well as copper (Cu) and plastics that can be recycled

There are actually plenty of companies making money, if not fortune, by ripping of valuable materials from the old phones - here's one. They are for now atleast a gold - and a silver mine. I quess you will find out this in US as well, as your mobile phone penetration goes high enough for this "mining business" to turn valuable - they need masses of cell phones for it to be profitable.

Re:This probably will be reduced

[bughunter]

Or in your tooth.