Throughout history recycling has been a common human practice. It is believed that 93% of the population owns a mobile phone and they sure are a great invention.

Mobile phones have an average actual lifespan of around about 7 years, but most people don't use them for more than 18 months at least.

 

When mobile phones are correctly broken down it is possible to recycle materials like copper, nickel and plastic. These materials can than be used to make all kinds of tools.

This particular recycling method can reduce the amount of materials we take from the earth.

There are 0.2 grams of gold in each phone – so  about 50 million unused phones could produce 10 metric tons of the good stuff.

 

Not all recycled mobile phones are broken down, some are simply re-furbished and sent to developing countries to be re-used. They can be used in developing countries to transfer money between families, for easy communication and to speed up meetings and transactions..

Although it is great that we can use recyclables things to create new tools, we definitely do not want to have these things as part of our landfill. Some materials in mobile phones such as lead, coltan and brominated flame retardants do not break down naturally, causing it to constantly releasing toxic chemicals.

This is, as you can imagine, really bad for the environment as well as for the humans.

 

If humans try to recycle their phones by dropping it off at a nearest drop-off location or maybe try to have someone reuse their phone, it will help a lot.