New research has shown that over 17 million non-smart handsets are sitting in drawers across the UK, unused.
However, around a whopping 7.7 million adults have admitted to routinely discarding old electronics in household bins.
In order to rescue components from disused phones, Compare and Recycle has partnered with sustainable technology solution provider n2s to launch the Hungry For Phones Initiative – the UK’s first consumer-facing recycling initiative that uses naturally occurring bacteria to extract precious metals and critical raw materials locked inside obsolete devices.
Phones are transported in bulk to a facility where they are hand-dismantled to access the circuit boards. The high grade components are then shredded, bioleached to draw out base metals, separated into metals and sent to respective companies or individuals (such as jewellers and metal brokers).
Antonia Hristov, Head of Marketing at Compare and Recycle, said: “International E-Waste Day’s focus on fast tech this year is rightly about what we throw away too quickly. But there’s a quieter half of the story: the millions of devices we never let go of at all.
“Every phone in a drawer is gold, copper and palladium that isn’t being used, while we keep mining the planet for more. The Hungry For Phones Initiative gives those phones that can no longer be sold somewhere to go, and it turns out bacteria have a healthy appetite for them.
The value inside old phones is more than you would expect – between 7kg and 12kg of mobile phone PCBs recovering up to 1g of gold.
The scheme is aiming to move towards a culture of reuse and recycling, unlocking value that’s previously been locked into between drawers.
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