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You probably do not spend a lot of time thinking about the composition of your smartphone. But maybe you should do it because the average phone is a compendium of dizzying complexity of metals and minerals from around the world.
Now, a team of scientists from the University of Plymouth is trying to demystify the list of ingredients, hoping to raise awareness about the environmental and human impact of our devices. They do it in the most brutal way possible: grind the phones and measure the elements they contain.
As a preliminary demonstration of their work, the video below, which has just been published, details the chemical analysis performed by the team on an iPhone 4S. Arjan Dijkstra, lecturer in igneous petrology and one of the lead scientists behind the project, told Earther that his team had initially detected at least 39 elements over the phone. They would have detected more, he said, but "just wanted to focus on the more abundant," for the purpose of the demonstration. (Other experts have already said that an iPhone contained about 75 items.) Apple had not commented at that time.)
Decrypting the items inside the phone begins with the highly scientific step of depositing it in a blender. Once the phone has been cut into a mixture of fine dust and small pieces, the material is mixed with sodium peroxide in small crucibles and heated to 480 degrees Celsius. Dijkstra explained that sodium peroxide oxidizes all metals so that they can then be dissolved in a weak nitric acid solution. The precise elemental composition of this solution is then analyzed using an optical emission spectrometer.
Until now, the work has largely served to verify what we already understood about smartphones: they contain a lot ingredients. The elements of a phone go from familiar elements such as carbon and iron (both present in the steel body of the iPhone 4S, which later models have replaced with the new ones). ;aluminum). They also contain a handful of more exotic ingredients often described as "rare" or "critical" metals: tungsten, cobalt, molybdenum and rare earth metals dysprosium, neodymium, praseodymium and gadolinium, for n & # 39; 39, to name a few.
These metals are extracted only in small quantities each year, but they are absolutely essential to the operation of modern technology.
Many of the items revealed by the iPhone scan are in Apple's latest environmental report, which details its efforts to reduce the use of mined metals by strengthening its recycling programs, while others are not. . Most rare metals are nowadays recycled at a very low rate, which is unfortunate because their extraction often has negative consequences for the environment. If this is done without proper oversight, it can also lead to serious human rights violations. For example, cobalt extraction, which takes place mainly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been linked to the widespread use of child labor. In the same war-torn region, the extraction of tin, tungsten and tantalum can fuel armed conflict.
Greater transparency on the content of our devices can help raise awareness of these impacts. For example, by quantifying the most abundant metals in the 4S, researchers have estimated that the production of the 5-oz device requires about 10 to 15 kilograms of rock extracted from the Earth.
"We hope that they [consumers] can now look at their phone in a different light, not only as a high-tech gadget, but also as an article made from mined raw materials, "Dijkstra told Earther in an email. "So every new phone leaves 10-15 kg of rock in the ground. It's actually a series of small holes around the world. In other words, unless it is made from recycled materials.
Perhaps this demonstration will encourage Apple to accelerate its recycling efforts. In the meantime, the team is analyzing more and more phones, with a particular look at how rare earth levels – whose operation produces high levels of toxic waste byproducts – and elements such as cobalt and tantalum, known to fuel conflict, are essential. changing.
They rely on volunteers to provide the old phones. If you have one, you are thinking of throwing garbage in the trash, now you can use it a lot better.
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