More than 5 billion phones to end up in landfill this year as old mobiles thrown away

Lined up next to each other, discarded phones would stretch around whole equator, Mustafa Qadri reports

The total global stock of mobile phones is estimated to be 16 billion (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

More than 5 billion mobile phones will become waste around the world this year, new data suggests.

If stacked on top of each other, the phones would make a tower more than 30,000 miles tall, 120 times higher than the International Space Station. The disused phones could also stretch the entire way around the equator.

The data from the UN Institute for Training and Research suggests only a small fraction of the 5.3 billion phones will be properly disposed of.

Phones normally contain gold, copper, silver, palladium and other recyclable parts. But experts have estimated that the majority of phones will disappear into drawers, closets and cupboards or be tossed into waste bins bound for landfills.

Mobile phones rank fourth among small electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) products most often hoarded by consumers.

A survey of 8,775 European households was conducted to reveal why so many households and businesses fail to bring waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) in for repair or recycling.

Households from Portugal, Netherlands, Italy, Romania and Slovenia, and a separate UK survey, has shown an average household own 74 e-products such as phones, tablets, laptops, electric tools, hair dryers, toasters and other appliances with 13 being unused or broken.

The survey has also shown that the most hoarded small items are accessories like headphones and remote controls.

Director General of the WEEE Forum, Pascal Leroy said: “We focused this year on small e-waste items because it is very easy for them to accumulate unused and unnoticed in households, or to be tossed into the ordinary garbage bin.

“People tend not to realise that all these seemingly insignificant items have a lot of value, and together at a global level represent massive volumes.”

In the past twenty years, the WEEE Forum has collected, de-polluted, recycled or prepared more than 30 million tonnes of wasted electric equipment.

Virginijus Sinkevičius, European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries said: “The continuing growth in the production, consumption and disposal of electronic devices have huge environmental and climate impacts.

“The European Commission is addressing those with proposals and measures throughout the whole product life-cycle, starting from design until collection and proper treatment when electronics become waste.”

“Moreover, preventing waste and recovering important raw materials from e-waste is crucial to avoid putting more strain on the world’s resources. Only by establishing a circular economy for electronics, the EU will continue to lead in the efforts to urgently address the fast-growing problem of e-waste.”

Top 5 reasons for hoarding old tech

• I might use it again in the future (46%)
• I plan on selling it / giving it away (15%)
• It has sentimental value (13%)
• It might have value in the future (9%)
• I don’t know how to dispose of it (7%)