How to recycle mobile phones 1

Modern smartphones are more or less essential for everyday life. But what you might not know is that the constant cycle of buying and upgrading phones is bad for the environment. Precious metals and other premium materials are extracted from the earth for their construction and when you throw away your phone, those metals and other materials will sit in a landfill for years and years.

Making your phone last as long as possible by repairing it and buying a used or refurbished model when it’s time to upgrade can help lessen the impact of your phone, but to ensure it stays out of a landfill, you should consider recycling or reselling your phone when you’re ready for a new one. Not only is it a better decision for the planet, but you might get a few bucks out of it too.
To walk you through the process, we talked to an expert in e-waste to figure out exactly how you should recycle your phone and lessen its impact on the environment.

Why can’t you just throw your phone away?

You may want to get rid of your old phone quickly by tossing it in the garbage, but that’s far from a good idea. Improper disposal of old gadgets can create e-waste landfills due to their inability to compose. This makes old phones an increasingly significant threat against the wellbeing of our environment.

“Approximately 57.4 million metric tons of e-waste was generated worldwide in 2021,” said Samantha Vesey, chief sustainability officer at Decluttr, a smartphone reselling and recycling company. And this e-waste can also contribute to global warming, according to Vesey. “As smartphone use grows, so will waste streams and carbon emissions. If sent to landfills, e-waste can leach harmful chemicals into the soil, or if incinerated, fumes release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.”

Because of this, it’s clear that throwing your old phone in the trash is far from a good idea. That’s why it’s important to recycle it somehow, and luckily, there are plenty of ways to do it.

Jacob Krol/CNN

Repurposing your phone

One of the biggest upsides of modern smartphones is their ability to last a long time. Nowadays, companies build their phones to adapt to longer upgrade cycles that can stretch to three or four years. The simplest way to make your phone more sustainable is to ensure it lasts as long as possible.

If you’ve only had your old phone for a couple of years, it probably still has plenty of life left in it. You could use it as a webcam for your laptop, a high-end iPod for media consumption, a photo frame for your desk or even as a VR headset with the proper hardware. There’s also the option of keeping it as a backup phone in case something happens to yours.

Another way to extend your phone’s lifespan is to get it repaired. Simple problems like cracked screens, broken ports or lackluster battery life can be solved with a trip to your local repair shop. And if there isn’t a shop around you, companies like CPR Cell Phone Repair make getting your phone repaired online easy, allowing you to send in your old phone and request the patch-ups you’re looking for.

Getting ready to recycle your phone

If your phone has finally met the end of its life and you need to get rid of it, it’s important to prep it so you don’t lose any data or, worse, have it fall into the wrong hands.

Make sure you back your phone up to a cloud storage provider so you don’t lose anything (photos, contacts, passwords, apps), then perform a factory reset to erase everything. Most phones can either use your Apple ID or Google account to back up your device. Alternatively, you could transfer the data from your old phone to your new one while setting it up, eliminating the need for a backup. You’ll also want to pop out your SIM card and any memory cards you may have installed.