Archive for March 21st, 2014

Do you know how much your mobile is actually worth?

More and more people these days are trading their mobile phones in for cash and many of us, especially when we are in dire need of that cash won’t stop and think about how much our phone is worth. Instead we will simply just post it off, or hand it in to our nearest store and take whatever cash they’ll hand over. Have you ever stopped to think about how much your phone is actually worth? What metals are involved in the making of it?

There are three main metals that can be found in mobile phones, lead, nickel and cadmium and the use of each of these three makes recycling a phone all the more important. Cadmium is an especially toxic metal, and when a phone is dumped or sent to a landfill somewhere, trace elements can potentially find their way into food and water supplies. Recycling a phone means that you remove the chance for contamination. Lead and nickel are similarly bad for you, making recycling ever more important.

In reality, around 90% of a mobile phone can be recycled and reused, an amazingly high statistic compared with other electronics, and due to the turnaround of technology (most mobile phone contracts now last two years), it is certainly worth trading in and recycling your phone when you upgrade to a brand new one.

Often, it isn’t even mobile phones that the recycling phones wind up becoming. You can find the materials from recycled phones in everything from copper roofs on buildings, to ski-lifts, winding their way up the side of mountains to get you to your destination. It’s amazing how much variety there is in the use of these materials, and even the plastic is used, often going into benches.

Trading in a phone will even get you a bit of money, where dumping it won’t, and after a few years of use, being paid to get rid of a phone is a blessing, and certainly won’t make you feel ripped off. You’ll be able to see the effect of your recycling all over the world.

If you want to find out a good price for your phone, you can always check out a website like Albemarle Bond who value metals of many different varieties. It can interesting to see how much a phone’s metals is really worth.