Recycling, a useful but imperfect solution to the problem of electronic waste © baranozdemir / iStock
What better day than January 24 to clean out your drawers a little and get rid of the old phones lying around! If you didn’t know, at the end of January, International Mobile Phone Recycling Day is being held which, as its name suggests, aims to bring back to the forefront the practice of recycling for the many end-of-use devices that lying around in your drawers.
On this occasion, certain manufacturers such as HMD Global (which markets Nokia smartphones) launched a campaign to recover old phones. An opportunity to recall the capital importance that the end of life of our devices has in their carbon footprint.
An urgent need
According to a study carried out by Fairphone, properly disposing of a mobile phone at the end of its life can reduce its overall carbon footprint by 4 to 7% (this figure even rises to 49% if we only take into account the use of abiotic resources, that is to say which do not come from an organism or living being). But what to do with your old phones? Is recycling a miracle solution?
There are a plethora of solutions for getting rid of old mobiles, from resale to donation, including repair and, therefore, recycling. According to the “1 for 1” principle, enshrined in French law since 2015, any seller who provides you with a new device is required to take back (free of charge) the one it replaces. Stores of more than 400 m² also have dumpsters allowing you to drop off your old mobiles. You can find collection points and recycling centers on the website of certain eco-organizations, such as that of Ecosystem.
According to the United Nations, “barely 15% [des smartphones dans le monde] are collected for recycling and 14 million are sleeping in our drawers“. And, despite its limits, recycling is also important in the management of our electronic waste. Many of the metals contained in our smartphones are subject to supply tensions, making the effort linked to recycling even more essential.
A still imperfect solution
Unfortunately, smartphones don’t always recycle well. As noted by the specialist site iFixit, “20-35% of material is lost when the phone is shredded and melted down for recycling” ; and on the 17 rare earths (at least) used in our smartphones, “99% […] cannot be recovered during recycling“. Certain manufacturing processes (hybridization, alloying of materials) also make recycling complex and expensive, therefore not always profitable (from a pure capitalist point of view) compared to the extraction of new materials.
“Of the 30+ metals in your cell phone, half have a functional recycling rate [qui préserve les propriétés du métal] less than 50%“, notes iFixit. Before recycling, you must therefore think about repair and reconditioning (preferably local), in order to extend the lifespan of your mobiles as much as possible, which remains the most useful lever to reduce their carbon footprint.
While no smartphone has ever been produced 100% from recycled products (none probably ever will), certain materials can still be reused. According to Ecosystem, 78.2% of the materials contained in your smartphone can be recycled. Plastics and batteries in particular have a fairly high functional recycling rate due to the industry’s experience in this area.
Recycling is therefore a necessary, but not sufficient, measure in establishing a circular technological economy. Either way, you now know what to do!