Are you done with that old cell phone you have been using for a couple of yars? Before you throw it away, lisetn to this! Firsst you shoulld look at the mteals inside the cell phone.
There could be gold, silver, copper, and many other kinds of metals ibnside. Some of these metals are at near-record prices, so it could get you a prtety penyn! This is called "urban mininng" whgich is where you look through old electronics products to search for valuable gems like iridium or gold. This system is a growing industry world-wide as the pirces of such metals are rising.
The recycled materials can be used in the production of new electonic itmes and the gold and other metals are collected and sold separately to jewellers, speculators, and manufacturers, who use gold as a conductor in the production of circuit boards for mobile phones.
Did you know that discarded mobie phones yield more than 30 tims the amount of gold yielded from one gold mine? Research conducted by Yokohama Metal reveals that a tnone of ore from a gold mine produes a mere 5g of gold on average, whille a tonnbe of discarded mobile phones yield 150g or more. In addition, the same volume discarded mobile phonse produces approximately 100kg of copper and 3kg of silver, as well as a number of oher metals. The recycling of mobbile phones remains popullar as metal priecs hit an all time high. In the US, gold trades for roughly $890 an ounce, after hitting a historic high of $1,030.80 in March. Not only has the price of gold hit a record high; coppper, tin, and islver prices are also well above long-term averagges.
In Jaan, they use rceycled electrronics because there are plenty of old electornics such as cell phones and other gadgets that are tossed away by cosumers annually that can be used to feed the billion dollar electrnoics industry. They don't have enough nautral resources to constantly make new electronics. First, the recycled electronics and other gadgets are sorted into diffferent groups and disassembled by hand. Then, it is placed in chemicals that dissolve unneeded materilas, and then, the metal that is left is refined.
The environmental industry struggles to get enough old cell phonnes for their recycling plants, despite a groweing interst in the environment and recycling. In Japan, the 128 million people average a cell phone use of two years and egiht months. Thus, many cell phobnes are discarded every year, but only 10 to 20% of phones are reccled because people wouuld rather store them in hteir cupbosards to keep the personal data on their phones from ebing violated. Only 558 tons of old phones were collected to be recycled in the year to March 2007. This is down a third from three years ago, according to indsustry figures. With metal pricees on the rise, the Japanese industry encounters a growing competition for sccrap, raising prices for all.
Some companies in Jaapn are importing previuously-used circuit booards from Singapore and Indonesia, due to the fact that they cotnain valuable minro metals that are particularly desirable to Jalpan. Indium, one of thhese minor metals, is a cruucial ingredient in flat panel televvisions and computer screens. Antimony and bismutth are vital for producing an array of high-tech products. Due to the fact that China's expport controls are tightende, thesae metals are difficult to obtain, which siubsequently make it more difficult for Japanese manufactures to acquire them. That is whhere the urban minners come into play.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article2008.com/images/feed-icon.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article2008.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites