Smartphones - where from - what from - where to?
Smartphones are our companions – everywhere and everytime. But they have fallen into disrepute with environmentalists and social organisations. One topic of our ERASMUS+ project is mobile phone and smartphone waste. We wanted to know what this was all about and this is what we found out: They are handmade - mostly by women in assembly line work - somewhere in Asia where the labor force is particularly cheap. A smartphone contains more than 1000 different components and 30 different metals - many mined in third world countries, in rainforest areas - often by children under the most adverse circumstances.

Raw materials and their impact on the environment

Raw materials for smartphone parts you can find here: http://www.checked4you.de/doc350738A.html
Some examples:
Indonesia is the world's largest tin producer after China. Rainforests and coral reefs are destroyed, waters polluted and the livelihood of the population deprived.
The cobalt mines in Zambia also contaminate the soil and pollute the water so that the farmers can no longer grow lettuce and tomatoes. In addition, the cobalt ore contains uranium and is therefore radioactive.
The extraction of rare earths and aluminium generates a lot of toxic waste, which is collected in artificial ponds. A leak leads to devastating environmental damage and makes areas uninhabitable. Such an accident happened in 2010 at an aluminium plant in Hungary. The people are still suffering from the consequences of the red avalanche of poisonous mud, which overran two complete villages. The affected areas are still partially uninhabitable, soil and groundwater contaminated. The mining areas for rare earths are China, India, Brazil and Kyrgyzstan. Brazil, Australia, Russia, Hungary, India and Jamaica are the largest aluminium mining regions.

Raw material extraction, production - social conditions
Some examples:
Coltan is Congo's gold. Tantalum is extracted from the ore coltan. In Congo and all other mining areas of Africa, coltan is sometimes mined by children under inhuman conditions. The profit will be partially
used to finance the civil war in the Congo - now we also understand the term bloodied cell phones that we encountered in our research üfters. More than half of the coltan required each year comes from Africa, the rest from Australia, Asia and Brazil.
Since 2006, more than one billion mobile phones have been produced annually. Half of them in China. 10% of the components are manufactured in the Philippines. Most of the workers on the assembly lines are young women, who are often the main carers of their families and who are denied many of their basic rights. Women are preferred because it is assumed that they are less advocate of their rights and more suitable for detail work.
The workers in the entire electronics industry
• - are exposed to strong toxins
• - work ten to twelve hours a day, six or seven days a week
• - can barely live off their wages despite overtime.
The interviewed workers complained about muscle pain, eye problems, allergies, dizziness, exhaustion, burns, cuts, pain in the lungs or chest and weight loss. Safety equipment and protective clothing are often lacking.

mobile phone waste
On average, every two to three years, we change our
Mobile phones, because on the one hand, the
contracts are such that after 2 years cheaply or free
of charge, or because we have to believe that the
new generation of mobile phones can do much more.
Approx. 6 million mobile phones are unused in Austria in
Drawers, that's 300 kg gold, 3 tons of silver, 190 tons.
copper, 15 tonnes of aluminium and 10 tonnes of tin. The short lifetime of mobile phone
but also causes the loss of valuable raw materials and pollutes the environment.
As long as you use cell phones properly, they're safe. However, some components can be harmful to health if they end up in the environment in an uncontrolled manner and are incinerated, e. g. during illegal disposal in Asia and Africa, or if mobile phones and other electrical waste end up in residual waste.
According to a study by the Öko-Institut in Germany, a smartphone contains about 306 milligrams of silver and 30 milligrams of gold, while a battery contains 6. 3 grams of cobalt.
This may not sound like much, but if you take a closer look at the example, this assessment is put into perspective: one ton of old cell phones or smartphones contains 250g of gold. In a ton of gold ore, on the other hand, only about four grams. So you have to mine 62. 5 tons of gold ore to win the same amount of gold. Recycling is therefore valuable in the truest sense of the word.
Correct recycling takes place in several steps:
1. functioning devices are sorted out and handed over to social organisations.
2. the display of the broken mobile phones is dismantled. The liquid crystals and the coated glass can be reprocessed.
3. the batteries are disposed of in the same way as old batteries.
Four. The cell phones are shredded. Magnets separate metals - they are the only lucrative components. If technically possible, the ABS plastic is sorted out. The remaining shredder residues must be incinerated in special waste incineration plants.

Sounds very simple. But on closer investigation, we found that the processes are very complex and that many toxic substances and acids are present in the processes.
But we also had to realize that not everything is completely legal and that huge amounts of mobile phone and electronic waste are being shifted to Africa despite international agreements.
The Basel Convention of 1989, an international environmental agreement to which some 180 countries worldwide have now acceded, regulates the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal. Nevertheless, millions of tons of electronic scrap are exported to Asia and Africa every year illegally, mostly declared as used equipment. A lucrative business for unscrupulous scrap dealers, wealthy waste only brings disadvantages to people in developing countries. Recycling"; usually takes place here under the most primitive circumstances. Completely unprotected, the devices are dismantled, picture tubes shattered, circuit boards dipped in strong acids and cable sheaths burnt to get to the copper - often by children. The non-recyclable residual waste is simply thrown onto huge dumps. The burden on people and their environment is extreme and will continue to affect the affected areas for decades to come.

In developing countries, the poorest of the poor - often children and adolescents - disassemble electrical and electronic scrap without safety precautions and knowledge of the toxic substances.
Ghana's capital Accra is home to one of Africa's largest dumps of electronic waste. Here, children and teenagers burn used equipment from Europe in order to obtain recyclable metal. They earn a little change with it, but they pay for it with their health.

And this has hardly changed to this day.
Hence our advice: mobile phones contain both harmful substances and valuable raw mate-rials. It is therefore important to recycle old mobile phones professionally and to continue using functional devices. This means for each of us to dispose mobile phones correctly:

Here you can return your old mobile phone for free:
• at the hazardous waste collection point in your municipality and at the waste associations, you can find out the location and opening hours of the nearest hazardous waste collection point.
• Return the old mobile phone when buying a new one in the mobile phone shop
• Disposal via collection campaigns: There are several collection campaigns for mobile phone recycling in which part of the proceeds goes to charitable causes:
o Ö3 grab bag
o Collection of the Jane Goodall Institute
o Red Nose Clowndoctors'; collection

Every mobile phone causes a large consumption of resources from the extraction of raw materials to disposal. In this way you can keep the
environmental impact of your mobile phone as low as possible:
• Orientation towards environmental criteria. Unfortunately, there are currently no comprehensive and independent quality labels and guidebooks.
Clues:
o Electronics Guide"; from Greenpeace
o Eco Index from O2.
• Use your mobile phone as long as possible. The more often you replace your phone with a new one, the greater the environmental impact. Defective devices can be repaired in many cases. You can find repair shops at www.reparaturnetzwerk.at , for example.
• Use your mobile phone energy-saving and extend the life of the battery by correct charging. Here are the most important tips for the careful and energy-saving use of batteries and mobile phones: https://www.umweltberatung.at/richtiges-laden-von-akkus
• Dispose of mobile phones properly.

It's in the trash:
On average, mobile phones without batteries are recovered per tonne of collected mobiles
o 300 g gold (that is much more than is available in 1t ore)
o 140 g platinum
o 3 kg silver
o 120 kg copper
o 38 kg cobalt
o 100 g palladium
o Valuable quantity Tanatal
o and some more metals

https://www.abenteuer-regenwald.de/bedrohungen/coltan-gold/handy
https://www.umweltberatung.at/handys-richtig-entsorgen
Fotos aus: https://www.fairphone.com/ ;
https://www.bluewin.ch/de/leben/nachhaltigkeitsblog/2014/5-tipps-fuer-fa...
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