This year, a total of 5.3 billion mobile phones will be end of life and not recycled, most of them will end up in boxes and some will end up in the trash, which is a very serious problem. About 1.5 billion phones are sold worldwide each year, and a total of 16 billion phones are estimated to exist.

The WEEE Forum estimates that 5.3 billion old phones will be thrown away this year on the occasion of International E-Waste Day. The vast majority stay in boxes, but some end up in the trash and end up in landfills where they can be incinerated.

The WEEE Forum says that if 5 billion phones were stacked on top of each other, they would form a tower 50,000 km high, which is about one-eighth the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

People don’t recycle their old phones for many reasons: they think they’ll need them again, they plan to give them to relatives later, they’re attached to those phones, or they don’t know where to recycle them.

The most common reason for keeping old phones in boxes is that one day the phone will be needed.

Phones contain a number of rare materials that, with proper recycling, can be recovered and used to make new gadgets. Even if the phone doesn’t have a lot of it, recovering these materials through recycling is cheaper than getting the materials through mining. And the harmful impact on the environment will be significantly reduced.

Worldwide, the annual amount of electrical and electronic waste that is not recycled is estimated to increase from 44 million tons in 2020 to 74 million tons in 2030.

Sources: phys.org, Digital Trends