The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that electronic waste is growing three times faster than general rubbish.
According to statistics 7.8 million new mobile phones arrived in Australia last year, but only 10 per cent were recycled.
The manager of Recycling scheme Mobile Muster, Rose Read says: “We did a survey and found that 16 million phones were lying unused in Australian homes. They’re not obvious like old computers — they usually end up in a bottom drawer somewhere.”
She says that awareness of mobile phone recycling is growing but that many Australians refuse to part with their old phones as they want to keep them as a back-up and others just forget about them.
Mobile Muster was founded in 1999 and is funded by network carriers and phone firms like Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG and Samsung. The companies pay 42c for each phone which is imported to Australia. The phones are then broken down into parts and the parts recycled. They use plastic from the cases to make fence posts and car bumpers, the nickel found in the batteries is reused in stainless steel, and gold is extracted from the circuit boards. From a tonne of circuit boards about 300g of gold can be extracted.
They are trying to liase with other brands such as Apple to encourage them to take part in the scheme.