This contaminates a mobile phone: a battery ‘corrupts’ 600,000 liters of water

  • In each mobile phone there are 40 polluting materials
All the pieces that an iPhone contains. Image: Back Market

The telephone they have in their hands is a very dangerous pollutant or at least that is what a study carried out by the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences of the University of Surrey shows. This study tells that with the single battery of a mobile phone 600,000 liters of water can be contaminated.

It also provides other data such that each high-end phone releases about 95 kilos of CO2 into the atmosphere. And is that within each 'smartphone' there are about 40 toxic materials such as arsenic, zinc, lead, cadmium or mercury.

Inside the phones there are also valuable materials (although only a few milligrams), but for example with 50 mobile phones you could get enough gold to make a wedding ring.

“Although the mobile phone contains some very toxic materials, 90% of its components are reusable,” says one of those responsible for Back Market, a company that takes advantage of all those components that can be reused from a phone mobile.