This year, phone sales in India are set to increase by 18.5% to 138.6 million units. This increase leads to an increase in the disposal of old mobiles and e-waste from mobile phones is set to rise 18 times by 2020. Old phones currently constitute 1,700 tonnes of the 50,000 tonnes of e-waste that is generated in India every year.
Due to this trend, 16 companies have joined a new sector for organised recycling. However, according to e-waste recycling company Greenscape: “Almost 90 per cent of e-waste is being recycled by the unorganised sector, which includes small scale garbage collectors. The process they use for extracting precious metals is not only harmful, but also results in the loss of almost 75 per cent of the precious metals.”
Each year, mobile phone and PC makers use 3% of the world’s entire gold and silver supply as well as 13% of palladium, 15% of cobalt, and lots of aluminum, copper, steel and nickel.
The organised recycling companies recycle all parts of the old phone locally except for the printed circuit boards (PCBs). These are exported abroad to smelting companies for metal extraction.
Despite this, according to a study by Nokia, awareness about recycling in India was the lowest among all countries surveyed at 17% and a massive 84%f Indians don’t even think about recycling their unwanted phones.