Electronic gadgets are filled with lots of tiny parts and metals.
Throwing away these in a landfill means that the toxic materials in the broken electronics can make their way into area waterways and soil.
Recycling services in developing countries that pay workers to break down electronics can expose workers to toxic materials, often without any safety procedures in place.
Used cell phones will be reused-the ultimate form of recycling.
Numerous electronic gizmos have a very short lifespan (cell phones for example last an average of two years or less) - either because they are not built to last and because of the need to constantly upgrades to keep up with technology and your neighbor.
This will rapidly become a runaway problem if we don't make better use of the materials we have, as well as, develop better recycling procedures.
Approximately 10 percent are recycled from used phones.
Recycling campaigns or programs for used cell phones benefit to refurbish, reuse and responsibly recycle discarded cell phones more than one million pounds of materials from landfills every year, reclaiming materials such as: - Plastics from phone cases and accessories -Circuit boards containing precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum and palladium - Batteries, containing heavy metals such as nickel, iron, cadmium and lead - Phone chargers, containing copper wiring - Shipping materials containing paper and cardboard Now, recovered materials are being applied to non-mobile phone products such as auto parts and electronic components.
Approximately all of the materials used to manufacture a cell phone can be recovered to make new products.
Like, metals, plastics, batteries and the packaging materials can be recycled and turned into new products.
All cell phones contain a number of different metals - gold, silver, platinum, palladium, rhodium, copper, tin, lead, brass and zinc - that can be extracted and recovered in the recycling process.
Some recovered metals can be used by a number of different industries such as jewelry, plating, electronics, plumbing, automotive, and art foundries.
Other products that can be manufactured from the recovered materials include automotive catalytic converters, plumbing faucets and piping, gold or silver jewelry.
New products can be made from recycled plastic collected from used cell phones.
Such as garden furniture, license plate frames, non-food containers and replacement automotive parts.
The plastic could alternatively be used as a fuel, due to its high thermal value and used cell phones batteries are recycled into other rechargeable battery products.