Cellphones at their Graveyard

Remember that swanky blue 3310 that you once proudly owned and flaunted? Or the Nokia 7650, the first Series60 phone from the Finnish company? Do you remember the Mobira Cityman 900, the first consumer GSM phone from Nokia, approximately priced at €4,560 back then? Have you ever wondered what happens to phones after you have given them up, only to go ahead and buy an even better phone with almost double the features at half the price? Well, we do.

It turns out, phones have their own graveyard too.

The folks over at Technology review have come up with a splendid Photo Tour of a facility based in Michigan, USA; rightly called ReCellular. Working at the nation’s largest cellphone recycling plant, the employees browse through thousands of phones trying to find those which can be refurbished and reused. Of all the phones that land up at the facility, 60% of the phones are refurbished and sent back into the market. Some phones are so lucky, that they end up being reused as much as three times. 

Hope’s not lost for the other phones though, the ones that are barely damaged are broken down to their components. And the phones that are have wires or components hanging out are sent over to another facility, for smelting, which receives over 30,000 pounds of phones every month.