Samsung pledges to recycle recalled phones

28th March 2017


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  • Electronics ,
  • Pollution & Waste Management

Author

Alison Hunter

Samsung has agreed to recycle 4.3 million Galaxy note 7 smart phones, which were recalled last year following battery faults.

The South Korean electronics company said it planned to refurbish and sell the recalled phones or reuse them as rental phones, according to a statement on its website.

The firm said it would remove salvageable components including semiconductors and camera modules for reuse or sale and extract metals.

It also pledged to join an EU-research project aimed at developing new technology for recycling smartphones.

According to analysis by German-based research institute OekoInstitut commissioned by Greenpeace, the 4.3 million phones contain more than 20 tonnes of cobalt; one tonne of tungsten; several kilos of tantalum; 20-60 kilograms of palladium; 100 kilograms of gold; and 1,000 kilograms of silver.

Parts in a broken phone are worth almost 30% of the original phone value, so if Samsung were to reuse components and recycle resources, the company would both minimise the environmental impact of disposal and regain revenue from components that have already been manufactured, Greenpeace said.

In February, protestors from the campaign group attended a Samsung press conference at a trade fair in Spain and demanded that the firm rethinks the way its phones are produced.

Jude Lee, global senior campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia, said the NGO welcomed the news that Samsung would recycle the Galaxy note 7 smart phones. But he called on the firm to share as soon as possible more detailed timelines on when it would implement its promises, as well as how it intended to change production methods to make sure the problems with the devices, which were prone to catching fire, never happened again.

Later this year, Greenpeace said it would rank the best-selling smart phone models from 14 companies according to how repairable they are.

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