Everything you need to know about the precious metals behind your smartphone screen contributing to a multibillion dollar industry

The smart phone you’re likely reading this blog on can rack up hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Behind the screens, though, is where it gets interesting. Loaded with precious metals and rare earth metals collectively worth billions of dollars, it’s hard to imagine that many of us just throw away these pocket-sized vaults of precious metals when they become obsolete after two years to replace them with a newer device.

In the United Kingdom, for example, nearly 5 million people admit to binning their old phones, dumping all the costly technology rather than recycling them. This includes mercury in the battery, the crystal display and circuit boards, lead in the solder that joins parts, beryllium in electronic connectors and arsenic and silica in the chip.

The numbers are even more alarming in the United States and in China. The waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) forum estimated that around 151 million phones are trashed each year. Meanwhile, in China, with a population of around 970 million smartphone users in 2020, the smartphone recycling rate is below 2%, posing a huge challenge to the e-waste recycling industry.

Given that there are hundreds of millions of iPhone users around the world, these small traces of metals in one phone collectively add up to a significant amount when we consider just how many smart phones exist around the world.

A ton of iPhones can yield 300 times more gold than a ton of gold ore, according to Back Market calculations. This gold is used to cover the phone’s electrical circuits so they do not corrode over time. The same amount of phones also yields 6.5 times more silver than a ton of silver ore. Additionally, one million iPhones contain around 15 kg of palladium, which is specifically used in the electrical circuits.

Because so many old smartphones are thrown away, these metals end up polluting the environment as a toxic brew of chemicals.

In Apple’s 2016 environmental progress report covering 2015, it wrote that through the company’s take-back programs, it had recovered over 61 million pounds of metals and plastics. But most notably, the company recovered 2,204 lbs, or 997.1kg of gold.

More than 1.2 million tons of electronic waste, or e-waste, is produced from smartphones and laptops in just the UK each year. Therefore, phone-refurbishing companies like Back Market are running advertisements urging smartphone users to recycle our old phones instead. 

“A single refurbished mobile saves 258 kg of raw materials,” says one poster.

If all users recycled their old smartphones, the prodigious amount of precious metals could be extracted and melted down for re-use, eliminating the need to mine new ore. Not only does recycling precious metals help preserve valuable natural resources, it is also a more economically and environmentally viable alternative to mining new metals.

Recycling metals does not deteriorate the quality of the metals, even if recycled many times. For example, recycling steel reduces water and air pollution by 76% and 86% respectively.

At Majestic Corporation, we believe everyone plays a part in contributing to a sustainable future. We seek to recycle materials that can return to the global supply chain and return as much waste we collect as possible for re-use into a circular economy. Using state-of-the-art technology, we process WEEE materials, minimising e-waste and ensuring valuable materials are properly reused and recycled.

Majestic Corporation has been a leading precious metals recyclers, non-ferrous metals and Catalytic converter provider for around three decades. With a presence in the United States, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Italy, Mexico, Australia, Hong Kong and more, as well as a network of precious metals refineries around the world, we work with major customers and partners in a transparent and discrete manner and only offer the highest quality services at competitive prices. 

Contact us here for more information. For media inquiries, please contact info@majestic-corp.com