Cleaner production – a solution to pollution?
Box 2 | Mobile phones from the cradle to the grave
Assessing the impact of production on the environment is not an easy task. There are always more things to consider than you might think. Objects have an impact not only as they are produced, but also when they are being used and when we want to get rid of them.
As an example take the mobile phone. With 20 million of them in Australia, on average almost everyone has one. It is hard to imagine that there was a time when nobody had a mobile, so seemingly indispensable have they become to us today.
Yet, with the rapid pace of technological change, we tire quite quickly of the phones we are currently using. With new features and new networks appearing all the time and the handsets getting smaller and lighter, the average mobile now has a useful life of 2 years at most. So every year, around 10 million new mobiles have to be made, and another 10 million thrown away.
To guide research into cleaner production, mobile phone companies analyse the impact of mobile phones on the environment throughout their 'life' using a process called Life Cycle Assessment. A mobile phone may be small (that is part of its appeal) but it is intricate, a prime example of high technology, and making one takes a substantial amount of energy and resources, as well as ingenuity. The resources used are mostly not renewable: copper and other metals (some of them rare and expensive) for the circuits and microchips; lithium for the battery; and plastics derived from crude oil for the casing, keys and screen.
Not only are the resources in general not renewable, but extracting and processing them requires substantial energy and resources. Metals for the circuits, for example, need to be mined then purified; this processing uses energy and other chemicals. The manufacture of the components and their assembly into the finished product also needs energy and resources. It doesn't stop there: the final packaging of your phone might rely on resources such as trees (for paper and cardboard) and oil (for plastic wrapping), then fossil fuels are used to transport the phones.
A study by the big phone company Nokia showed that making a mobile takes twice as much energy as the phone consumes during its working life, and that transport accounts for 10 per cent of the energy cost of the phone.
And then, after all that effort, we often want to throw it away when we upgrade to the new model. It seems such a waste. What's more it can be environmentally hazardous. Some of the components themselves contain toxic materials such as mercury, and others consume chemicals during manufacture. If a phone is simply put into the household garbage and ends up in landfill, toxic materials in it can eventually leach out into the environment.
Much better to recycle your phone through programs like MobileMuster or Clean Up Australia. There are plenty of discarded phones and batteries waiting for a new home, with 75 per cent of us having at least one unused mobile at home.
What happens to your old phone once you have handed it in? Although they have received criticism for transferring waste to developing countries, recycling programs are becoming more regulated. The materials in a mobile phone are too valuable to simply throw away. For example the circuit boards can be sent to specialised smelters where copper, gold, silver and palladium can be recovered. The copper will find use in other electronic products; the precious metals might end up in jewellery. Plastics recovered from the phone and accessories can join the increasing volume of recycled plastics turned into durable pallets and fence posts.
Not much is wasted when batteries are recycled. Plastic coverings are stripped off and shredded and then burnt to provide heat for the smelting of the recovered metals, which include cadmium, lithium and cobalt. Those can be reused in new batteries.
But this recycling doesn't come for free; although it reuses valuable resources the process itself requires energy and resources. Upgrading to the latest model is a costly exercise.
Mobile phone companies are doing their bit. Research is now underway to reduce the identified impacts from Life Cycle Assessment of mobiles, including finding replacements for the toxic chemicals in phones, improving recycling and reducing the energy costs. Before long we'll be buying mobile phones with biodegradable casings and solar battery rechargers.
Related sites
The product life cycle (RSA WEEE Man, European Union)
Life cycle analysis (Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, Australia)
The life cycle of a cell phone (United States Environmental Protection Agency, USA)
Mobile phone recycling (MobileMuster, Australia)
Recharge your mobile wherever you are (News in Science, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 5 April 2004)
Mobile phone pushes up the daisies (News in Science, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1 December 2004)
Page updated November 2008.