One ton of old iPhones contains up to 300 g of gold, much more than a ton of ore.
The hidden treasures in your smartphone
- Every smartphone contains small amounts of precious metals:
- gold (approximately 0.034 g per iPhone)
- silver (≈0.34 g), palladium (≈0.015 g), and platinum (less than 0.001 g)
- as well as less valuable but abundant metals such as aluminum (25 g) and copper (15 g)
- The content of these materials in a cell phone is much more concentrated than the same weight of extracted ore: 1 ton of iPhones contains about 300 times more gold and 6.5 times more silver than the equivalent natural minerals.
The problem of waste and e-waste
- Users change smartphones every 11 months on average, accumulating a huge volume of electronic waste that often ends up in drawers or landfills.
- Only a small percentage of used devices (around 10%) are recycled properly, while the rest represent unused "domestic mines."
How recycling works
- Large-scale recovery requires costly industrial processes: separation, smelting, and refining, often involving high energy consumption or the use of chemical solvents.
- In some areas, such as the town of Guiyu in China, e-waste is managed informally, exposing workers to toxic substances such as mercury, lead, and arsenic.
With the increase in demand for rare metals, traditional mining is becoming increasingly expensive and polluting. Recovery from electronic waste (urban mining) is the only ecological and strategic alternative for saving resources.
