Why don't we recycle our old phones?
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Discussion keeps the world turning. This is Roundtable. We sleep with it, eat with it, freak out if it goes missing for five minutes. Yep, your smartphones are practically family these days. But once the bright shiny new one arrives, the old phone gets ghosted, dumped into a drawer to collect dust.

Love at first swipe, ghosted at first upgrade. Why the cold goodbye? And more importantly, can old phones get a second shot at life? Of course they can. But why is it so difficult? Coming to you live from Beijing, this is Roundtable. I'm He Yang. For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Yu Shun in the studio. First on today's show...

Your smartphone knows you better than your best friend. From birthday reminders to breakup playlists, your old phone has been there. But once a shinier model comes along, it's benched forever. With an estimated 6 billion idle mobile phones in China from 2021 to 2025,

and only 1 in 10 gets properly recycled, isn't it time we rethink how we part ways with our old devices? Well, guys, after nearly a decade of talk, the recycling rate for old mobile phones in this country, or I suppose everywhere, remains stubbornly low. What's really going on?

Yeah, first of all, China has become the country with the largest number of mobile phone users, right? And also, as you mentioned, He Yang, by 2025, it is expected to have more than 6 billion idle phones, but only a small amount of these users.

Numerous discarded or idle mobile phones enter the recycling system. The data from the China Association of Circular Economy saying that only about 10% of them can enter professional secondhand platforms and other new recycling channels. Over 54% of mobile phones are left in household drawers for a long time due to...

Maybe several reasons for people are just not willing to give it to some professional platforms. Yeah, I think we'll get to some of the reasons later on. Do either of you – I know that I'm guilty, if that's the right word, I'm guilty of this –

of having a phone, new model comes out. I actually don't get the newest models. I go like two generations behind, but it's still an upgrade for me. And then I guess I just don't know what to do with the old device. So I feel like, well, I shouldn't just throw it

away. Maybe I'll just sell it later. Maybe I'll use it later. So exactly what you said you should. Goes in the drawer and then I forget about it. And then, you know, months or if not years later, you open that drawer and go, oh, yeah, I have a phone in here. I'm not alone. There's tons of people who do things exactly like that. China. This is from the China National Resources Recycling Association.

They showed that China produces on average an average of about 600 million to 700 million discarded mobile phones annually. And according to the statistics, the value or hidden value, if you want to call it that, of secondhand mobile phones in China, it's a lot of money. It's more than 600 billion yuan. That's about 83 billion dollars. That's a lot of money indeed. And so many of us have more than one mobile.

Old phones just sleeping in the drawer. And also, I guess this could be something, you know, I also echo with the guilty sense, the sense of guilt a little bit. I have also a few laptops. Yeah. A few iPads and all these electronics.

on top of my phones that are just idle in my home. So most of us let our old phones hibernate in junk drawers. And why is that a problem? It's a waste of resources. And you could blame technology here. Almost, couldn't you? Because there's so much tech coming at us all the time. There's constantly new generations of

New phones and new tablets and new computers. And the upgrading of mobile phones has been accelerating at a pretty decent speed. And that significantly shortens the user's replacement cycle, the recycling of waste products.

in mobile phones is becoming a really important topic of resource recycling and also ecological protection. This is from Statista, and I think we can all agree with this, that the average lifespan of a smartphone, this is from the United States, but maybe it's true in China as well and maybe other countries, the average lifespan of a phone is about

two and a half years and you might find some users will keep it a little bit longer some users will keep them a little bit shorter but what we can find from this is and this is from professor uh zhang cheng from nanjing university of finance and economics the recycling of old mobile phones it's a precise industrial chain from electronic waste to urban mines and each ton

of discarded mobile phones can extract about 400 grams of gold, about 2,300 grams of silver, as well as various metals like palladium and copper and tin and so on. And this amount far exceeds the mining efficiency of traditional mining. In contrast, for example, only 5 grams of gold can be extracted from one ton of ordinary natural gold ore.

that's gold and silver, the refining rate of silver ore is only one-tenth of that of mobile phones. And that's important. And maybe even more importantly, those precious metals, they're not disposable consumables. Zhang added that through precise dismantling and refining processes, metals like gold and like silver and also copper, they can be remelted into high-purity raw materials.

And those can be directly supplied to the electronics manufacturing industry. And if not that, then maybe jewelry processing. And if not that, then maybe even the aerospace industry. The point is, is that there's a lot of good stuff that's going to waste.

Yes, good stuff and also bad stuff, to be honest. Yeah, that's also fair. Yeah, you know, we know that mobile phones, they have a lot of chips and sophisticated components inside the mobile phones. Of course, we got that precious metals, but also improper handling of discarded phones poses environmental risks because of the materials inside.

Mobile phone materials contain various hazardous substances including mercury, lead, cadmium, and other heavy metals. If these substances enter the soil or groundwater and accumulate in an ecosystem, they can pose risks

to both the ecological environment and also human health. Also, foam materials are inherently difficult to naturally decompose, and improper disposal can lead to long-term environmental impacts. Yeah, like global warming, for example. This is a quote from Samantha Vesey, who is the chief sustainability officer at

declutter. That's a smartphone reselling and recycling company. Here's the quote. Approximately 57.4 million metric tons of e-waste was generated worldwide in 2021. So there we're not just talking smartphones, we're talking

e-waste in general. That e-waste can contribute to global warming as smartphone, the quote continues, as smartphone use grows, so will waste streams and carbon emissions. And if sent to landfills, e-waste can leach harmful chemicals into the soil, or if incinerated, fumes release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. All those harmful chemicals and metals that you just mentioned, Yushan, that's what she's referencing there.

Yeah, and also think about the lithium batteries in the smartphones. If they don't get recycled properly, that becomes hazardous.

material seeps into earth and that would be really, really bad. But if it's being recycled nicely, then it's a safe. It's a plus for the environment. And also just consider all those materials like you guys have mentioned have been painstakingly extracted and refined to go into your phone in the first place. And it just makes so much sense that it can be, if it can be recycled properly.

And all that being said, and also just a small sort of observation, which I see as maybe a little bit of a change in the phone industry, that is, if I can remind you, more than a decade ago when the iPhone 4 first came out, the excitement, I don't know if Yushun was old enough for that. Of course. Hello? But it

It was an event. The world was excited about smartphones. And I remember my younger cousin who was pretty young back then, and he got sucked into that fast replacements, chasing the trend cycle as many young people tend to do. And he had to replace his phone every 10 months when the new Apple

Apple or whatever, you know, developer came out with their big presentation and he's like, I have to get the new phone. Otherwise, I don't look cool in front of my teenage friends. But era, in my opinion, has faded away. Yeah, I think you're right. And I'm not referencing any survey statistics here or anything, but I think we can all agree that, yeah, it used to be. And I think that's why these tech companies did a great job of selling these products.

these products is because they made it an event, right? It was a huge announcement. There would be, you know, coming soon. They would give like little, they would leak like little things about the new upgrades and things like that. And it was a huge event and it got people excited. My guess is that we've become so accustomed to

to that, that it's just not as exciting to us anymore. Smartphones, yeah, when they first came out, model 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, maybe very exciting for people. But now, you know, we're on model, what model are we on? I don't even know what model we're on now. Is it 16 if we're still referring to the Californian fruit brand? But also, I want to say one thing, that is,

I don't think I am an anomaly in this that so many of us were bored of new phones. They don't change. They might have a slightly better chip, but that's pretty much it. My old phone went on for more than seven years until I replaced it with this one. And I've had it for two years already. And I intended to run for more than another five years. So, yeah.

My point here, although it's a small point, is maybe we've become a little bit smarter and then the phone developers might have improved their product that is not completely just planned obsolescence. Now these things can actually last a bit longer and then maybe we can replace them with less frequency. But all that being said, I care about the environment. We preached the preach.

all the time on the show and I wanted to bring my old phone to the store for a trade-in program not only to get rid of it but to get rid of it in a safe way and also maybe to get a little few more bucks shaved off from my new phone

my old model was too old. And it was... They didn't want it. They were like, yeah, this... Oh, we can take it for you for free. Yes. And that's the only time when free is not, you know, ringing the right bell for me. So, you know, there are some of us who try to do this, but I want to just, you

zero in on why this is not happening for us. That is, you guys mentioned all the things that we need to care about. Yes, global warming, we need to care about that. But as long as it's not in my backyard, NIMBY, and then we don't really care about it. You guys mentioned about all these precious rare earth materials. Yes, I've already paid a very expensive one-time price for it. And some companies are going to benefit from it.

Has nothing to do with me. And then I'm just not... Oh, yeah. And I want to go into the store for the trade-in program. And I...

they're saying, you know, like they can do it for free, then none of this is really speaking to me. So what's holding us back from turning tech trash into possibly treasure? Actually, you know, when you were given us the example of your cousin, I was thinking about this type of people. They actually, you know, this type of people who change their phones like 10 months and very frequently change

They are not actually the people that we're talking about today because they will always trading or just sell their old phones for a little bit of recovery of their wallet. Yeah, that's a fair point, right? Nobody keeps the one generation before phone that's working perfectly in their drawer anymore.

and keeps it there and forgets about it. Yeah, these are older models. Yeah, you're right. We're talking about a different group of people here, aren't we? Yeah. And in this case, many people may consider selling their phones and it could not worth it just like He Yang. You've been using this phone for more than five years, probably even almost 10 years. Then it could be

the product of last generation. I mean that generation, which means maybe the generation of the brand even. So sometimes they will not value that much when you are just reselling them. In that case, a lot of people may don't think it is worth it or it is even very troublesome because they need to go to the store, even supermarket or a shopping center to give their old phone. Maybe you can only get one or two bucks or just for free, right? One or two.

I can't decide for free or one or two yuan, which is more insulting, but both just makes me feel really bad. And also, let's just make it real for people, buying a phone or any electronics out

out there, it's the same as getting a new car. The minute you drive your new car out of the lot, it is what, 30% or 40% off the amount you just paid for. So what do you call it? A consumable good or something like that? And then, yeah, the price, it really diminishes.

But if you're asking why people don't do it, because like you said, we're aware, right? We're aware that phones have good things in them and bad things in them. We're aware that if we just throw them out, they just hurt the environment. And we don't want to actively hurt the environment. Nobody on the planet wakes up every morning and says, I want to destroy planet Earth. Nobody says this, right? But yet...

the irony there is that we don't necessarily take the necessary steps to make sure that we're recycling our phones properly. So I found a survey result and this is why top five reasons why people keep their unused or broken electronics.

Number five on the list, 7% don't know how to dispose of these products. And I think that's one very important point. The recycling channels can be confusing, excuse me, and people just don't know what they're supposed to do with them. Number four, 9% said the items may appreciate in value over time. That one surprised me because I guess people have the opinion, uh,

Well, maybe 20 years down the line, this Model 4 of this generation of phone will become some sort of collector's item or something like that. 13%, this is number three, 13% say they hold on to these items for sentimental value. That one's interesting. Number two, 15% say they plan to sell or give away the items. That makes sense. Number one, 46% say they may use the items again one day.

meaning, oh, I guess I won't hand this into the company or give it to my cousin or whatever because, oh, I might use it. And that one applied to me previously. I used to lose phones all the time. It was this weird thing that I went through for like three years. I had no...

no reason behind why it was happening to me, but I was just losing my phone constantly. So one time I got a new phone and the old phone, I said, okay, I'm keeping this because I know, I know I'm going to lose my new phone at some point. And then I can just put a chip in this old one and everything will be okay. So I guess maybe there's something there as well.

Put it as a backup phone is a lot of people's choices, actually. And also, I can understand the third one, sentimental reasons, right? It is interesting, and I can totally relate to it because I have the exact same sentiment of this. I just have bond with my old phones when I've been using it for several years, and I think it is becoming...

I think one of little pet-like gadget in my life. I can actually have connections with it. And now my old phone is becoming just alarm at the front of my bed. And it is becoming just a little digital clock. Like a little fixture in your room. Yes. And I plugged in the whole day for the whole day. And it's just...

A beautiful, shiny, also not that old clock. And you can always see it and it can look good and you will not lose it. That is such a heartwarming love story, which I did not expect.

Because most of us, I think we just can't wait to migrate all the necessary information data from one phone to the new one and then start exploring the new phone. And the only reason I keep my old phone is I have 180.

86 gigabytes of podcasts. Oh, yeah. That I promised myself I will listen to one day. And a lot of the downloaded content cannot be downloaded again. Okay. So I must keep it. It's a storage device for you. Also, it's a smaller phone. Like we talked about on a previous show, smaller phones have its charm. And when we talk about recycling, actually in China in recent years, I think

there has been some changes, maybe not happening so quickly, but one very visible change I've seen is that, can you imagine, Steve, in super nice shopping malls,

scattered around Beijing, there are recycling stations, or let me just call them recycling shops, that take your old smartphones. Oh, I've not seen those before. Okay, next time I'll point one out for you. I wasn't looking for them either, to be fair. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, see that...

But I don't think I used to see them. And also just thinking, just trying to quickly do the calculation there. If they're able to set up shop in such a nice shopping mall, then they must have been making money or there's enough capital that goes into setting up this business. But recycling, either giving it to your...

family relative or donating to charity or, you know, selling it or reselling it through these legitimate business channels, there are some, uh, not, uh, not brand new, but, but you see them more visibly around you options. So what do you guys think? Yeah, these are mostly third party, um,

recycling brands I would say for example the brand called iHuiShou they will just get your old phones no matter it's like function or are totally destroyed you they can

take it and if it is a fully functional unit, they can resell it on their platform or they can just recycle all of the materials inside your phone as we just discussed. So these are the brands that is doing this kind of business and it has actually becoming an industry in recent years.

Data from Tianyancha, which is an enterprise information platform, is showing that there are currently over 4,500 existing phone recycling enterprises in China with Hunan...

Hunan province having more than 1,400 ranking first in the country. So, and also in terms of establishment time, more than 50% of these enterprises were just founded within the past one to five years. So it is growing quite fast and it's becoming...

Business. A profitable business? Yeah. And there's policy support now, too. In early 2024, the opinions on accelerating the establishment of a waste recycling system, it set the goal of preliminarily establishing a waste recycling system covering all sectors and stages by this year, 2025.

the regulations on the administration of the recycling and disposal of waste electrical and electronic products. That was implemented since 2011. That stipulates the activities involved in recycling and disposal. It defines the responsibilities of relevant parties. It also outlines

outlines the supervision and management requirements. There's lots of policy in place. And recently, a demonstration project for secured phone recycling and disposal. This was led by China Resources Recycling Group. They successfully...

completed their trial operation, and they've now begun rolling out services in provincial capitals in China. This is very well organized. So according to Liu Yu, the party secretary and chairman, as a state-owned enterprise in the circular economy sector, the group, they've built a nationwide network for the secure disposal and resource recovery of phones.

and not just phones other electronic products as well the secured phone recycling and disposal model is now being replicated and promoted in different parts of the country so here's what people can do so customers they can place orders through a wechat mini program and choose door-to-door pickup or a confidential mail in recycling option

And the phones are sent to specialized facilities for secured dismantling, mechanical crushing, and then final stage smelting. And the entire process is visible, it's trackable, and it's monitored. And it effectively safeguards consumer privacy and data security, which it wasn't included in the survey answers that I gave you before about why people don't want to throw away their old electronics.

But data privacy is huge. It's one of the big concerns, right? Even if you wipe your phone, you might not feel comfortable. So when you can when they have a program like this in place where you can track the whole process, this is a really nice thing for customers to put their mind at ease.

Also, I think that's really essential, whether the trust can be established because you are banking information. Who knows what kind of photos you have and all kinds of personal information. Our whole life is on the phone. How do you make sure that somebody or a third party is going to trust?

For sure, get rid of it that nobody else is going to lay eyes on it. I mean, can that trust be established? It's really important here.

yeah and that is why I personally have that kind of state of mind of giving my old phone to the original brand that I bought because first of all it is quite reliable that you because you chose this brand and also you when you're giving back your old phone to them they have the responsibility to erase everything personal in this phone and if there is a leakage of your personal information there should be a bad reputation to their brand which is not a good thing so they

Well in some way be responsible for these kind of behaviors. So that is my choice and also Finding a kind of reliable platform or third-party platform that we're talking about is the way also people can find a trustful at least corporate or a platform to do this kind of thing to make sure that your personal information is not

giving out to strangers or people who are using my personal information for other use. Yeah, because it's different, isn't it? You know, if you're replacing your television, for example, you're upgrading, and that piece of tech in your home, you're not concerned about recycling that. You just put it outside, put a sticker on it. I'm not sure how it works here in China. Somebody will come and pick it up, and then off it goes, and you don't even think about it.

your life isn't on your TV. You said it very well, Hyun, didn't you? Our lives exist within those little rectangles that we hold in our hands every day. And people are very nervous about, and they should be, I think, about just throwing them away. They want to know that it's going to be done properly and effectively. Yes. And also, there are some really advanced technologies that have been applied in this field. And just reading through some of them made me really excited. And I think

think maybe potentially some of these technologies could make the whole recycling process a little bit easier. Yeah, they have intelligent recycling robots now because, of course, they do. Those are equipped with advanced sensors and algorithms, and they can quickly identify the phone's model and condition and the fault level if there happens to be something wrong with the phone. And they can automatically match it with a corresponding recycling price. Also, by analyzing the

massive volumes of transactions and user behavior data enterprises can accurately predict mobile phone replacement cycles and recycling intent across different regions and and different demographics too and and that allows them to tailor marketing strategies with precision and and it makes the recycling of old phones more efficient and just i guess more intelligent also the adoption of

some low-temperature crushing and precision separation technologies. Just making your information into pieces and no one will find out. Anyway, and also biotechnology-based resource extraction methods can refine recovered metal ions into high-purity materials that are reintegrated into the production of new electronic devices, thereby forming a closed-loop resource recycling system. Interesting.

In a world where upgrading feels endless, real progress means closing that loop, turning old phones into new resources. Recycling isn't just a choice, it's a responsibility to our planet and future generations.