In UK, a study has discovered that unused mobile phones consists of £100m worth of gold inside them and are being wasted. The study states that the unused mobile phones must be recycled instead of throwing it into the thrash.
The study which was conducted at the University of Surrey, declared that if all the calculated 85 million unused and discarded mobile phones were recycled then a minimum of £100million and 84,000 tons of carbon dioxide would be saved. The research team found out that the number of facilities recycling mobile phones are far less compared to number of discarded mobiles.
The 100 milion worth of gold could be recycled and an enormous ton of carbon dioxide could be brought out by recycling the 85 million unused mobile phones for recycling process. Each of the handsets are made by using precious metals such as gold, copper, silver, which are costly to be extracted and causes extreme environmental pollution. The study which was led by Dr James Suckling stated that by just replacing the available gold inside these mobile phones will worth up to 110 million and also would release 84,000 tons of carbon dioxide which is the only breathing material available for the plants.
This encourages the mobile operator to introduce a new technique to make people recycle their unused liked mobile phones at their service operator. A ‘take-back’ clause is suggested by a paper published in the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, which asks the consumers to recycle their mobile phones after usage to their fullest at the end of the contract.
The current model provides a very little incentive to those who recycle their unused phones, so this results in the mobile phones being unnoticed in the garbage. The researchers also suggested that a ‘cloud-based product service’ model could be implemented where the memory is stored on the cloud and can be used by the phone for processing thereby leading to less usage of precious metals inside it.
