Greening of Government:
Waste Management

Managing Materials - Mobile Phones

Overview

Mobile phones are comprised of useful resources, the vast majority of which can be recovered and reused, and also toxic components which are hazardous, and need to be kept from contaminating land and water.

There is a national free collection and recycling scheme for mobile phones, MobileMuster, run by the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA).

The AMTA estimates that there are approximately 33.5 million mobile phones in circulation in Australia, either in use or in storage.

Issue

Australia has one of the highest per capita ownership rates of mobile phones in the world, and on average, Australians update their phone every 18 months to two years. An estimated 17.5 million mobile phones are currently in use, with a further 16 million phones stored in cupboards and drawers around the country.

Over 90% of the materials in mobile phones can be recovered and used as raw materials for new products:

• batteries include nickel to make stainless steel and cobalt and cadmium to make new batteries
• circuit boards include small amounts of gold and silver that is used in jewellery and other applications
• handset housings and casings include plastics that are shredded and used to make fence posts and pallets
• accessories include plastics and metals that are shredded, sorted and then used to make new plasticor metal products

The large number and turnover of mobile phones creates the risk of them being consigned to landfill, resulting in these resources being buried rather than recovered. Mobile phones and their batteries also contain toxic substances which should be prevented from contaminating land or water.

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Management

The Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association’s (AMTA) mobile phone collection and recycling scheme, Mobile Muster, was established in 1999 to prevent mobile phones ending up in landfill.

The scheme is funded by various handset manufacturers, carriers and service providers and is free to consumers and retailers.

The program collects and recycles mobile phone handsets, batteries and accessories from a network of over 1900 mobile phone retailers, local council, government agencies and businesses drop off points across Australia. ANZ Bank branches are also acting as collection points.

From 1999 to 2006, 402 tonnes of mobile phone handsets, batteries and accessories were collected.

Used phones are collected, dismantled and sorted into batteries, printed circuit boards, handsets and accessories:

www.mobilemuster.com.au/?Page=678

These are then sent to specific recyclers locally or overseas who further shred, sort and process these components for recovery of plastics, metals and precious metals including nickel, cadmium, silver and gold.

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Action

Contact MobileMuster, who can provide free phone recycling collection bins and pick up services on request, and tools to help promote the system such as fact sheets, brochures, posters, stickers and mouse mats.

The number of phones and rate of turnover in each agency and worksite will determine which approach to phone recycling is the most appropriate.

• agencies with a higher volume/turnover of phones could establish a collection system co-ordinated via a central contact point (if there are several internal collection points, ensure that records are kept of the total number of items sent for recycling).

• agencies with a lower volume/turnover could either set up one Mobile Muster bin as a collection depository within the agency where surplus or end of life phones are stored, or if there are only a small number of phones collected per year, take them to a MobileMuster collection point such as a local government or phone retailer - find the nearest collection point searching by postcode:
  
  www.mobilemuster.com.au/recycle.asp

Agencies could issue a ‘muster’ reminder every six or 12 months to remind staff to forward any unused mobiles to the agency collection point, or drop them off at a public MobileMuster point (and ensure details of the number of phones recycled are forwarded to an appropriate person in the agency for reporting purposes).

Mobile Muster Contact Details:

Phone: (02) 8920 3555
Email: mobilemuster@amta.org.au

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Reporting

Agencies are to keep a record of the number of phones which were disposed of as surplus or end-of-life, and what percentage of these were sent for reuse and/or recycling for annual reporting purposes.

Further Information

www.mobilemuster.com.au
MobileMuster – Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association

www.basel.int/industry/mppiwp/guid-info/index.html
Mobile Phone Partnership Initiative Work Programme: Approved Drafts - Secretariat of the Basel Convention, United Nations Environment Program

• Guideline on the Refurbishment of Used Mobile Phones (March 2006)
• Guideline on the Collection of Used Mobile Phones (March 2006)
• Guideline on Material Recovery and Recycling of End-of-Life Mobile Phones (March 2006)
• Guideline for the Transboundary Movement of Collected Mobile Phones (Approved Final Draft, November 2006)

www.ban.org/Library/mobilephonetoxicityrep.pdf
Mobile Toxic Waste: Toxicity of End-of-Life Cell Phones - Basel Action Network

The impact of mobile phones is not just at the end of their useful life, but when they are produced, due to demand for resources used in their manufacture. Along with reducing consumption in the first place, if these resources are captured for reuse/recycling, it will reduce demand for new resources and associated impacts:

www.cellular-news.com/coltan
Coltan, Gorillas and Cell Phones - Cellular News

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