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Mobile phone recycling

Help us save our natural resources & protect our environment

by recycling your old mobile phones now!

The Canberra Environment Centre has joined the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) mobile phone recycling program, MobileMuster, to help round up and recycle old mobile phones. With more than 12 million unused mobile phones cluttering drawers and cupboards across Australia, the Centre is rounding 'em up as part of the national campaign.

"Our goal is to raise community participation and lift our recycling levels to one million mobile phones and batteries a year by 2008. We have received enormous support from telecommunications providers and mobile phone manufacturers but to achieve our goal we also need the support of the Canberra community."
                   Rose Read, Manager of MobileMuster.

What/Where do I recycle?

Simply bring in your old mobile phones, batteries and accessories and place them in our collection bin at the Centre.  It's that easy!

We also have an outpost collection point at the ANU Food Co-operative (Kingsley St, Acton). Or to search for many other local collection centres visit www.mobilemuster.com.au or call 02 8920 3555.

Why recycle mobile phones?

  • Most people buy a new phone every 2 years.
  • Over 40% people keep their old mobile phones resulting in more than 12 million old mobile phones being stashed away in cupboards and draws at home and work
  • More than 93% of the materials in mobile phones can be recovered such as nickel, cadmium, cobalt from batteries; gold, silver, copper, tantalum, palladium and copper from circuit boards; various plastics and other metals from handsets and accessories.
  • You can extract at least 22 times more gold from a tonne of circuit boards then you can from a tonne of ore mined from the ground.
  • The materials recovered are used to make batteries, jewellery, stainless steel, plastic pallets and fence posts (Cyclone Composite Posts).
  • Mobile phones don't biodegrade and should not be put in the rubbish bin.  Especially batteries that contain cadmium which can potentially harm the environment.
  • The cadmium from one mobile phone is enough to pollute 600,000 litres of water (Holdway and Walker, 2004).

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What happens to them?

All mobiles collected will be sent to AMTA's official recycler MRI (Aust) Pty Ltd where they are dismantled, sorted and separated into circuit boards, batteries, handsets and accessories.  These are then processed either locally or overseas for resource recovery.

For more details about what happens to your phones, to find other local collection centres in your area or to organise your own MobileMuster visit www.mobilemuster.com.au or call 02 8920 3555.

Did you know?

You can find up to 20 times more gold in a tonne of old mobile phones
than you can in a tonne of gold ore from the average mine. In fact one
tonne of mobile phone circuit boards can yield up to 300 grams of gold
and 7.5 kilograms of silver.

 
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