Australians Urged to Recycle Old Mobile Phones

Australians urged to recycle old mobile phones

CANBERRA, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) — Australians are being urged to recycle their old mobile phones.

Rose Read, a spokeswoman for the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association said Thursday that Australians should recycle their old mobile phones because mobile phones contain many valuable metals such as gold, silver and nickel as well as plastics.

Read said every 50,000 handsets yield an estimated one kilogram of gold.

“More than 90 percent of the materials in mobile phone handsets, batteries and accessories can be recycled into new products such as jewelry, fense posts and stainless steel,” she was quoted by Australian Associated Press as saying.

“Mobile phones are not biodegradable and should not be thrown in the rubbish bin and end up in landfill, where potentially they could harm the environment,” she said.

She said old mobile phones are collected for recycling from many local mobile phone retail outlets.