Recent findings by the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment forum have revealed that 5.3 mobile phones will be thrown away and not recycled in 2022.
According to The British Broadcasting Corporation, many people prefer to keep their old unused phones instead of recycling them and this raises a global growing environmental problem of “e-waste”
The forum stated that copper in wire and cobalt in rechargeable batteries, for example, must be mined because they are not removed from discarded devices.
According to the director general of WEEE, Pascal Leroy, “People tend not to realise that all these seemingly insignificant items have a lot of value and together at a global level represent massive volumes.”
It was also stated that there are an estimated 16 billion mobile phones worldwide and in Europe, almost a third are no longer in use.
According to WEEE’s analysis, the “mountain” of electrical and electronic waste, including washing machines, toasters, tablet computers, and global positioning system gadgets, will increase by 74 million tonnes per year by 2030.
The body while advocating for increased mining of old and unused mobile phones stated that the devices hold many other important resources that can in the production of new devices.
