Gold, platinum and silver and other metals make up about 16 percent of the weight of a “typical” cell phone, the association says, and are extracted if phones can’t be reused or refurbished. Plastic in the phones can be recycled as well.
Suzanne Choney - MSNBC - April 13, 2009
Bet more batteries used here than all the hybrids built so far --Ed.
Pushed aside for the latest models, many of our old cell phones pile up in drawers, closets, garages and other out-of-the-way places where it’s easy to stash and forget them. Worse, some of them wind up in landfills, where their toxic elements are left to fester and contaminate the environment.
Renewed efforts by government and private industry are underway to get cell phone users to recycle their phones, with only about 10 percent of 140 million phones recycled in 2007, according to the federal
Environmental Protection Agency.
The vast remainder was either “stored away … or put in the trash,” said Latisha Petteway, an EPA spokeswoman. “Stored away” would be preferable to “trash,” but Petteway said the EPA does not have a more extensive breakdown to know how many get tossed in the weekly trash pickup, doomed for the dump.
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