Did you know there is gold in your cell phone? That forgotten device in your drawer is not just taking up space—it contains precious metals that could be recycled and reused.
Your phone needs gold to be reliable and work properly. Inside your phone, many tiny connections send signals between different parts – like a very small city with roads connecting everything. Gold is used to coat these connections because it has unique qualities that make it perfect for the job. Unlike other metals, it does not rust or corrode, so the connections stay clean and working. It also excels at conducting electricity, helping signals move efficiently through your device. Its natural flexibility means it can be made very thin, perfect for the tiny electronic components in modern phones. This precious metal can be found in the pins that carry electrical signals, the connectors that link different components, and the circuit boards that control everything. Scientists at the University of Dundee found it takes about 41 old phones to get enough gold to make one ring.
Researchers at ETH Zürich found something surprising: getting gold from old phones is much better than digging it out of the ground. When they compared the two methods, they discovered that old electronic devices contain much more gold per ton than rocks from a gold mine. This means recycling phones could be a smart way to make jewelry or new cell phones.
Just look at Switzerland as an example. There are about 6.5 million unused phones just sitting in Swiss drawers. which means about one in four phones gets recycled.
A report from the United Nations says that each year, the world throws away 50 million tonnes of old electronic devices. – It is more than the weight of all airplanes ever built for airlines. And only a small part of it, about 20%, gets recycled properly. In the United Kingdom alone, people are keeping 527 million old electronic devices in their homes, including 31 million old laptops. That is a lot of wasted resources.
When you look at a million old phones together, they contain impressive amounts of valuable materials. The UN’s Sustainable Cycles program reports they hold 24 kilograms of gold, 16,000 kilograms of copper, 350 kilograms of silver, and 14 kilograms of palladium. Experts say that by 2050, the world will be throwing away more than twice as many electronic devices as we do now.
Your old phone might not seem worth much, but when joined with others, it becomes part of something bigger.
Instead of keeping your old phone in a drawer, consider recycling it. This simple act helps save precious resources and protects our environment. It turns out that the gold mine of the future might not only be in the ground – but it might also be in our drawers.