Environmental organization Greenpeace demands that electronics giant Samsung, the harmful substances removed from the millions of smartphones that the market took, before they disposed of.
What happens with the 4.3 million Samsung Galaxy Note 7-phones that may spontaneously explode? According to Greenpeace, offers the crisis, Samsung has a “great chance” to create a new model to develop that easily can be recycled.
In september called Samsung global millions Note 7-phones back on, after a number of incidents whereby, in some cases, the phone caught on fire. The company says more than 3 million phones sold to have. Greenpeace, based on data from the German research agency Oeko-Institut, says that, in addition, another 1.3 million phones are produced which are never sold.
The largest smartphone maker in the world has according to Greenpeace, yet no clarity is given about what is going on with the phones is done.
smart phones contain toxic heavy metals such as hexavalent chromium, arsenic, beryllium, and cadmium. Which substances are present in the soil, the air and the water as the phones buried or incinerated. In this way, even people and animals, the substances inside.
Petition
a Lot of electronic waste ends up in countries like Vietnam, China and Nigeria, where impoverished inhabitants printed circuit boards and plastic burning, and microchips in acid to make precious metals out of it. In that way, change entire villages in afvalplaatsen.
The 4.3 million Samsung phones are worth a lot of money. According to Greenpeace, contain all the phones together about 100 kg of gold, which at current market prices, approximately 4 million euros worth. In addition, the phones between 20 and 60 kilograms of palladium (360.000 to € 1 million), a ton of silver (at least 590.000 euros), 20 tonnes of cobalt (518.000 euros) and 1 ton of tungsten (235.000 euro).
“These materials can be taken out, but threatening in the environment, to end up as a Samsung they are not reused,” says Greenpeace. “The dumping of millions of phones put also questioned the transparency of Samsung and the claims of the company when it comes to the ‘circular economy’ and the efficient use of materials.”
The environmental organization has a petition launched in which Samsung asked for the phones not to throw away.
Strict standards
Samsung has not responded to several requests for comment. “The company has a big problem, but also a great opportunity to have a better recycling system for phones,” says Gary Cook, IT analyst for Greenpeace in the United States. Cook says that for the first time in recent history that so many phones at the same time are retrieved. “Exactly the same model at exactly the same time collected. That provides really a chance, considering the volume, to a system for re-use.”
Jim Puckett, executive director of Action Network in Basel, a group that is committed against dumping of electronic waste, expected that Samsung not just as a large amount of phones will dump. “The Greenpeace petition called what confusion for me,” he says. “No one will just mobile phones dump, and certainly Samsung is not. They will at least be shredded and melted.”
Samsung is, according to him, one of the more transparent companies when it comes to recycling. “In North America Samsung to the highest standards. Materials go only to certified recycling companies.”
In general is the recycling of smartphones, however, is low, says Cook. “Every time you buy a new phone, are new materials used. That problem has Samsung not only that, the sector as a whole, works so. The materials are extracted from the ground and processed into a product with a short life span. That cycle begins every three years again. It’s not sustainable.”
Shipped
There are at least 2 billion mobile phones in the world. The vast majority of them ends up in landfills or is incinerated, ” says Cook. In 2010, threw Americans approximately 2.4 tons of electronics, including 150 million phones. Of this, 27 percent is recycled. More than 40 percent of the products were shipped to other countries and ended up in landfills in Hong Kong, in China and elsewhere in the world, according to figures from the Action Network.
According to Cook, contribute, recent changes in the design of phones coming in that they are difficult to access for repair and difficult to disassemble. Given the value of some components, would be an efficient disassembly method able to give an impuls to the recycling market. At the moment it is cheaper to get new fabric to mine, he observes.
In cooperation with Datanews
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