You may have recently noticed just how many companies are offering to trade-in or recycle old mobile phones, giving you a cash sum in return for your old phone – both in working or broken condition. If you are wondering why these companies can offer this service, the answer could lie in the amount of gold found in a mobile phone.
Phone recycling
The average mobile phone user will upgrade their phone every two years and when a shiny new smartphone enters someone’s life, an old phone (despite the fact it has served you well for the past two years) will find itself surplus to requirements. A lot of people choose to keep hold of their old phones, adding them to a collection of phones already cluttering up a drawer. However, there are many others that opt to recycle mobile phones, selecting one of the many companies, sending the phone away and receiving a small cheque.
Once the phone is in the possession of the recycling company, a number of things can happen. In some cases, phones are relatively modern and are able to be refurbished and sold on; there is even value in fixing broken phones and trading them at a profit; but what about the old phones, the giant brick-like structures with polyphonic ringtones? Well, it is unlikely that they can serve any purpose to another person, not as a phone anyway. When processed, however, a phone can serve several purposes to many different people.
Gold in a phone
There is 0.034 grams of gold in each mobile phone, this equates to 0.001 troy ounces. The gold is used in circuit boards and for its qualities in connecting the various parts of the phone together. If you were to take a tonne of mobile phones you could expect to yield anything from 150-400 grams of gold, compare this to a tonne of gold ore from a mine and the results are startling. One tonne of gold ore, taken from a mine will provide you with 0.2 grams, about 750 times less than the mobile phone equivalent. Such is the amount of gold in mobile phones that it would require only a 10 kilogram yield to produce a gold ring compared to a 10 tonne yield in gold ore!
In addition to gold there is also 16 grams of copper, 0.35 grams of silver and 0.00034 grams of platinum in each and every phone, with each of these materials being put to good use in making jewellery, batteries, stainless steel and various other items.
Knowing these facts will mean never looking at your phone in the same way again! When you upgrade your phone, sell your old mobile phone.
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