#How to extract gold from unused mobile phones

[mooknayakmedia]

How to extract gold from unused mobile phones

MOOKNAYAK MEDIA BUREAU | January 02, 2025 | Jaipur : In these days, Cell phone recycling plays a major role in the recycling industry. Cell phone cards have a good quantity of gold. In this tutorial, I explain two types of cell phone recycling. Gold recovery from the cell phone is some critical but this can give you a handsome profit. To extract the gold, you’ll need to use a chemical process.…

[ecoactiv-blog]

Why It's Important To Recycle Your Old Mobile Phones?

An average Australian home generates about 73 kg of electronic waste disposal items per year, and the majority of those items are mobile phones. There are about 25 million unused cell phones currently in Australian houses, and out of those, about 5 million are no longer in a working condition. Mobile phones contain a number of reusable materials like gold, silver, platinum, and copper. There are about 62 types of metals within a smartphone, along with 17 rare earth metals that are being used for the color brightness and phone vibration.

Other vital minerals that cell phones contain include tungsten, tantalum, and tin. These are used for various purposes within the mobile such as storing electricity in the capacitors and improving the circuit boards. This is why old mobile phones should never be thrown away, instead, they can be recycled to extract all of these valuable materials and use them again for a new purpose. This way we can keep our valuable metals in circulation and minimize the number of new minerals.

So How Can We Recycle Mobile Phones?    

Mobile phones are considered e-waste, therefore, they need to go through a process in order to get recycled. If you have any unwanted electronic items including mobile phones, they can be collected and recycled by an E Waste Recycling Sydney service. If mobile phones are in working condition, you can also consider donating them to a charity through your recycling company. It’s better to pass it to someone who is in need of one. However, if the phone is completely broken, it is better to send it to the recycling firm.

Mobile Phone Recycling In Australia

As per the Australian Bureau of Statistics, electronic waste in Australia is growing three times the rate of general waste, and smartphones are one of the biggest shareholders. However, recycling firms are working hard to provide solutions that can help customers deal with recycling issues. There are various locations all around Australia where people can drop off their old mobile phones or call the company to have it collected from their premises. There are many benefits to recycling your old mobile phones and contributing to the circular economy. Let’s have a look at some of these benefits:

1. Protecting The Environment

There are several hazardous items within the mobile phone including lead, mercury, arsenic, and cadmium. If the cell phones are thrown away or burnt, these toxic materials are released to the environment causing the damage. Even if they aren't burnt, they eventually end up at some soil area and start to contaminate the water resources and landfills. These toxic materials get piled up and keep on destroying the environment, however, with recycling, these hazardous materials can be reused in a manner that is not dangerous to the community.    

2. Saving The Energy

Recycling mobile phones can play a vital role in conserving energy. With a single recycled cell phone, the amount of energy saved can charge a laptop for more than 40 hours. There are about 130 million mobile phones getting thrown away annually, but if they are recycled, it can produce the energy to power approximately 24,000 houses.    

- Saving The Valuable Minerals

Mobile phones contain numerous minerals that are becoming hard to extract from the earth but they can be reused by recycling. Through a million recycled smartphones, we can recover about 35,000 pounds of copper, 770 pounds of silver, 75 and 33 pounds of gold and palladium respectively. This saves a lot of minerals that could have been extracted otherwise.    

- Impact On Health

The toxic materials within the mobile phones can harm the environment to the point where both humans and animals will be affected by it. Lead can be the cause of cancer for humans, whereas mercury can be dangerous for the muscles of animals. It’s best to call your Electronic Waste Disposal Melbourne facility so they can collect and recycle unwanted mobile phones properly to extract these materials and use them for a new purpose.