Our smartphones are real gold mines. In the literal sense. Each of our handheld computers contains a very small amount of gold. The precious metal is in fact necessary for the construction and proper functioning of some of the chips that power our phones, like many other metals. According to a study by SystExt (Extractive Systems and Environments), our mobiles contain more than 50 different materials, each of which weighs heavily in the overall carbon footprint of our mobiles.
According to Ademe, it takes around 200 kilos of raw materials to produce a single smartphone. Gold, tungsten or tin are not actually found in their pure state in nature. They are only present in small quantities in certain mining rocks. Recovering a few grams of usable ore therefore requires extracting large quantities of rocks which will then be refined to extract the substantial marrow necessary for the proper functioning of our phones.
According to Frédéric Bordage, founder of the Green IT collective, the quantity of raw material needed to manufacture a smartphone is easily calculated since it is approximately 500 times its weight. If we dive a little deeper into the bowels of the beast, “for a 2 gram electronic chip, 32 kg of raw material is required, or 16,000 times its weight“, indicates the specialist.
The race for renewal led by manufacturers and the frenzy of purchasing new products therefore have very concrete consequences on the depletion of soil, biodiversity and rare earths. The refining process itself also uses chemical components that are toxic to nature and humans. Add to that the endless controversies over the appalling working conditions in the large mining areas of Congo and you get a catastrophic social and ecological cocktail.
Recycling, a false solution
The extraction of raw materials is not the only activity depleting the planet. The production and end-of-life management of a smartphone requires the use of approximately 106 m³ of water. The bulk of this volume is used during chip manufacturing to “to clean» silicon wafers containing semiconductors.
Unfortunately, recycling the 50 or so materials used in our smartphones is a sweet dream. If progress is made here and there, “the complexity of the composition of smartphones and the alloys they contain makes it impossible to recycle devices at the end of their life», notes the SysExt association. The functional recycling rate (which preserves the useful characteristics of the material) of the few recyclable metals is around 50% according to a United Nations report.
No phone to date has been built from 100% recycled material and it’s a safe bet that it never will be. So to avoid extracting 200 kilos of stones each time you buy a mobile, prefer repair and reconditioning when possible.
