Negative Impact Of Mobile Phones

Introduction:
Throughout the last 20-30 years, mobile phones have gone from novelties to arguably the most central objects in our day to day lives. They connect us to our loved ones, enable businesses to develop, help us behave more intelligently, and give citizens a viral voice; especially important in countries where phones are the only real means people have to communicate. However, despite how close we are to our mobile phones, paying a small fortune for them, nesting them in our palms, talking to them all the time; we know amazingly little about them and the heavy impact they 're having on our community. There are many impacts that mobile phones have on the world, one of the most substantial and debatable topic around their impact is that

Global smartphone shipments will reach 567 million units this year alone (2012). And by 2016, 1 billion people worldwide will own smartphones,” (life hacker: 2012).

Relating back to the first commercial phone the Motorola 8000X, where it took 10 hours to charge and therefore as modern technology has increased, so has the ability to limit energy consumption of mobile phone with primary evidence of the ‘latest and greatest’ mobile phones taking approximately 1-2 hours to charge with a much longer battery life. This may not seem like any concerns should be raised however as suggested before with the quantity of mobile phones being used and produced and not just the well-off individuals in the 80’s, it’s becoming more of an accessory than an asset.

With this information in mind, to really place it in perspective of our world, the image on the left suggest that, “To charge every cell phone in use on earth would require the equivalent of 584,000 gallons (2,210,680 liters) of gas and produce 35,000,000 pounds (15,875,733 kilograms) of carbon dioxide (CO2)”. Now if this is just one single day of the year, image how much of an impact this would take not only on our environment, but our day to day lives being affected by this tragic new way of

According to The Daily Mail Australia, “The phones were completely disassembled and interior and exterior components were sampled by X-ray Fluorescence spectrometry - a process which determines the chemical composition of a material.” Out of all the phones examined, at least one of the following substances was in each mobile: lead, bromine, chlorine, mercury and cadmium. As discussed earlier each of these materials can cause significant harmful effects towards the environment at the end of their life-cycle. Shown on the right is an example of hazardous materials, the quantity, where it is located amongst the iPhone 5 and its corresponding rating (5 being the most dangerous and 0 being the most environmentally friendly).

Recommendations:
The way that mobile phones are manufactured, contradicts the amount of hazardous chemicals and materials enter our environment. Waste management is a key issue amongst mobile phones and recommendations need to be made to help sustain the environment.
Mobile Muster is an Australian company that recycles mobile phones by breaking them down from their hazardous materials and recycling them into useful