Future perspectives for WEEE recycling — Dynamic evaluation of the mobile phones and smartphones waste stream

Abstract

Over time, through incremental innovation, mobile phones and smartphones have more and more functions, becoming indispensable for everyday life. This has several consequences, one of them being that users replace their mobile phones and smartphones at ever shorter time intervals, which in turn implies an increased demand for (critical and precious) metals needed for the production of mobile phones and smartphones. This leads to end-of-life mobile phones and smartphones constituting one of the fastest growing electrical and electronic equipment waste streams in the world. For example, in Germany, the collection rate is around 5%. The aim of this paper is to assess and evaluate the precious and critical metals content and monetary value as well as economic perspectives for mobile phones and smartphones recycling in Germany. As a result, present and future recycling potential for precious and critical metals in mobile phones and smartphones are explored for Germany.