Cellphone Pollution

In 2012, 1.75 billion mobile phones were sold all over the world (Tech Review—Motorola a ringer in cellphone sales). This is just the number in 2012. And it is not hard to image that the total number of cellphone sales in 2014 will be a huge number. The table below shows the worldwide smartphone sales to end users by Vendor in 2014 (Thousands of Units).

Table 1

Source: Gartner (March 2015), Results for Lenovo include sales of mobile phones by Lenovo and Motorola.

With the development of cellphone technology, most consumers bought a new one to replace the old one. Thus, the substituted cellphone become a serious problem to the environment. These electronic wastes consist of many heavy metals and plastic. It will have great impact on environment such as soil pollution, water pollution. Due to this situation, it is necessary to do something to solve this problem.

  There are many ways that mobile phone may generate contamination. The first is in the process of produce mobile phone. And the main contaminations are PCB and the battery. Secondly, the main problem is the waste battery. A battery in one cellphone will pollute more than 60,000 liter fresh water. In addition, circuit board also has huge impact on the environment. Because there are many kinds of corrosion and poisonous materials in the circuit board, it is hard to recycle or degrade. Moreover, with the development of smartphone technology, the contamination shows some different characters in this decade.

1. Because smartphone becomes much smaller than before, so that it will be easily thrown into household waste rubbish bin. After the process of incineration, it will impact on the air environment.

2. If the mobile phone waste is put into landfill, then the landfill leachate will influence the soil. This will be a series of problems which finally affect the human health.

  Although there are many problems are caused by mobile phone waste, it cannot stop consumers to buy new one. Thus, to recycle and reuse these electronic waste become an important method. Firstly, to recycle the heavy metal in the electronic waste can generate a handsome profit. These kinds of heavy metal can be reused in other product. Secondly, the mobile phone shell also can be recycled. Thirdly, the most important part is battery. The nickel, copper, cobalt, neodymium, lithium, aluminum and iron can be recycled from mobile phone battery. Thus, recycling the mobile phone battery not only can obtain environment benefits, but also can get great profit in business.

  To sum up, because of the potential damage to the environment caused by mobile phone waste, it is necessary to build a specific recycle system to recycle this kind of waste. Due to the current recycle system and factories cannot meet the increasing mobile phone waste, the government should encourage companies to build more recycle factories. In addition, the policy also need to be set up as well. 

Reference:

[1] Sereda PJ. CBD-115. Performance of building materials. Canadian Building Digest, National Research Council Canada, 1969.

[2] Hutcheon NB. CBD-48 Requirements for exterior walls. Canadian Building Digest, Canada Research Council, 1963.