by Charles Liu
The NanfangToday, 09:18
Many of China’s 1.146 billion phone users are in the habit of upgrading to a newer model every year. The trouble is, this means that China has been saddled with the problem of dealing with the 400 million old phones that it discards on an annual basis.
“Every year, 90 percent of the increase in the number of mobile phones in China is the replacement of old phones with new (ones),” said Sun Wenping, president of Shenzhen Cellular. “Other people replaced their phones because they were broken or out of fashion,” he added.
So then, what happens to old phones in China?
According to Sun, cell phones that are recycled are first categorized. Some are refurbished to be sold on the second hand market, while those that cannot are dismantled with some useful parts reused. Phones and their parts that have no use are burned as waste.
But there’s a cost to throwing away old phones. Cell phones contain about 20 types of hazardous materials that can have serious effects on the environment and human health.
However, no phone is ever truly “obsolete”. Even when phones fall out of fashion or fall behind the march of progress, their raw materials are still made up of valuable materials. Cell phones are made up of 0.01 percent gold, 20 to 25 percent copper and 40 to 50 percent renewable plastic, while their motherboards contain silver, platinum and palladium.
Already home to a bustling phone refurbishing industry, China could be setting itself up for this new venture by drafting proposals specifically dealing with the disposal of electronic products, especially for last year’s mobile phone.
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