One-third of 16 billion mobile telephones used worldwide will become waste this year

Of the approximately 16 billion mobile phones used worldwide, around 5.3 billion are expected to become waste this year, experts announced ahead of International E-Waste Day on 14 October. Only a small share of these phones will be properly disposed of, said the Brussels-based WEEE Forum, an umbrella organisation of e-waste extended producer responsibility (EPR) systems, and the UN Institute for Training and Research (Unitar) in Geneva. To illustrate this volume, the two organisations noted that the end-of-life phones, which have an average depth of 9 mm, would form a tower nearly 50,000 km high if stacked atop one another....