HELSINKI -- Millions of old or broken mobile phones may be stashed in desk drawers across Europe, but they could be reborn once a new European Union recycling regulation comes into force.
Industry experts said it was impossible to estimate how many old or broken phones were lying unused, but the numbers could run into the hundreds of thousands in Finland alone, where around 80 percent of the population own cell phones.
But this is seen changing as telecoms equipment makers and recycling firms gird themselves for an EU electrical and electronic waste recycling directive set to come into force by 2004.
Mobiles represent just a minor share of the equipment covered by the new regulation -- major household appliances, computers and the like are bigger problems -- but the phones include valuable minerals that everyone agrees should be used again.
"The sales of new mobile phones represent a big amount of all goods sold, and their price per kilogram is high," said Timo Valkonen, head of Finland's WEE Producer Community, a nonprofit cooperative made up of companies in the industry which deals with waste from electrical and electronic equipment.
The mobile phone business has powered ahead in the past years, with global handset sales growing tenfold to just over 400 million units last year from 40 million in 1995.
And the business is still flourishing, even though cellphone makers have estimated that global sales in 2001 will fall slightly from last year's level. The world's biggest handset maker Nokia forecasts total sales of 390 million phones this year.
More than 800 million people around the world currently use mobile phones and around half of all phones sold are bought by people who already own a handset. Nokia has estimated that people tend to change their phones around every two years.
Until now, people have mainly given back for recycling only the brick-like first-generation models, handing newer models to family members when buying a new handset or even giving broken phones to children to be used as toys, industry experts said.
But though small in size, a cell phone includes material that may not be harmful as such but cause environmental harm if it up ends in a dump.
Nickel-cadmium batteries used especially in older phones are already considered hazardous waste in the EU, but making recycling a must will mean other possibly harmful material, such as lead, will not end up in dumps.
Currently, around 40 percent of the material used in metal gadgets is recycled, according to Kuusakoski, a group that recycles metals. Reusing metals is efficient, since it avoids expensive mining processes that have environmental consequences.
Reusing aluminium saves 95 percent of energy compared with the amount used for mining the metal again, Kuusakoski said.
And a sophisticated recycling process can separate several metals such as copper, silver and gold from circuit boards. Some of the newer models also include rare metals, such as tantalum.
Once the new recycling regulation comes into force, people will have to pay a bit more for their cell phones to cover costs, but Valkonen said the price hikes would be small and they were not seen having an impact on demand.
Nokia has said that if the recycling process is efficient enough, mobile phone recycling costs would not be significant.
After a debate between EU agencies, responsibility will likely fall on equipment makers to take care of their own products -- a system which, for example, Nokia and Sweden's Electrolux have promoted, European parliament member Heidi Hautala said.
"Ecological and environment-friendly product development are on their way anyway, and this directive may promote them," Hautala said. "This will have an effect on product design."
Recycling firms have also welcomed the new legislation.
"The current equipment was not made for recycling, so when the directive enters into force it may also make our job easier," said Arsi Saukkola, head of research and development at Kuusakoski.
While the new EU-wide regulation will likely oblige individual firms to see that their own new products are recycled, the industry would be collectively responsible for phones sold before the legislation enters into force, Hautala said.
It would be up to individual member states to set up phone recycling systems and ensure that people actually bring their phones back to stores or other places to be recycled.
"The producer cannot have an impact on all stages of a product's life cycle. It happens in many countries that small (electronic) gadgets are not recycled," said Tapio Takalo, Nokia's head of environmental affairs.
He said Nokia backed the EU proposal but that everyone, including consumers, should bear responsibility for recycling.
"It is good that firms have an individual responsibility for products, this is the only way that the incentive to develop better products remains," said Takalo.
In the future, cell phone manufacturers may also offer a totally new model of recycling for their products -- phones may include parts such as clip-on covers which may be thrown into compost heaps to be turned into soil.
Nokia has said it hopes to develop a phone with biodegradable parts within a few years.
.png){kind=logo}
