MobileMuster is the official recycling program of the mobile phone industry in Australia.
It was established voluntarily by the industry because of its desire to maintain high environmental standards and its commitment to product stewardship.
The program aims to:

• take back mobile phones, batteries and accessories at the end of their useful life,
• recover as much of the materials in these phones for reuse, and
• prevent mobile phones, batteries and accessories ending up in landfill.

The Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) is the peak industry body of the mobile phone industry and, on behalf of its members, it manages the mobile recycling program on a not for profit basis. Specifically, AMTA's role has been to establish a recycling program that:

• is industry-led and voluntary,
• reduces the environmental impact of mobile phones, batteries, chargers and accessories,
• is cost-effective, competitively neutral and reflects the specific market and cultural attributes of Australia,
• takes a co-operative approach between industry, government, the community and consumer groups,
• is nationally consistent,
• shares responsibility for a product fairly among those participating in its life-cycle, and
• is built on genuine partnerships and effective communication between all stakeholders including government, industry, non-government organisations and the community.
  

Key achievements that make the program a leader in product stewardship of electronic products and unique globally include:

• active involvement and support of the whole industry in a voluntary scheme,
• increasing community awareness of mobile phone recycling (79% of people are aware that they can recycle their mobile phones),
• collecting more than 667 tonnes of mobile phones, batteries and accessories for recycling,
• preventing over 4.48 million batteries and handsets and over 275 tonnes of accessories going into landfill,
• a free recycling service for consumers, local councils, businesses, schools and retailers, and
• disposal of non-recoverable parts in the least environmentally damaging way.

AMTA has engaged MRI (Melbourne and Sydney based specialists in waste management, including office and telecommunications equipment) to manage the recycling of mobile phones, batteries, chargers and accessories.

Mobile phones are similar in composition to other electronic devices, and are made up of plastics, metals, ceramics and glass. In more general terms, a mobile phone is made up of these basic components:

• a handset, which includes: a case (usually plastic), display or screen, (monochrome or colour), with a glass cover, keypad, and an antenna,
• a printed circuit (wiring) board, which is inside the handset case, with integrated chips, resistors, capacitors and wires, making up the electronic brains of the phone,
• a battery, and
• a microphone and a speaker.

The content of mobile phones varies from model to model and as the technology advances so does the composition. There is no exact formula or single list of substances however, the general composition is similar among all mobile phones and other types of small electronic equipment. Recently published data represents a reasonable average (weight percent):

• ABS-PC 29%
• Ceramics 16%
• Cu and compounds 15%
• Silicon Plastics 10%
• Epoxy 9%
• Other Plastics 8%
• Iron 3%
• PPS 2%
• Flame retardant 1%
• Nickel and compounds 1%
• Zinc and compounds 1%
• Silver and compounds 1%
• Al, Sn, Pb, Au, Pd, Mn, etc., less than 1%

To find out what substances are in your mobile phone please refer to the manufacturers specifications Some manufacturers also issue an Eco Declarations for each product such as Nokia - for more information on Eco Declarations visit www.mobilemuster.com.au.

Various precious, ferrous and non ferrous metals as well as plastics are recovered from the circuit boards, batteries, handset housings/casings and accessories.

Printed Circuit Boards (PCB)
After manual separation of components, mobile phone circuit boards can be processed in specialized smelters where copper and precious metals such as gold, silver and palladium are recovered. Smelting of mobile phone circuit boards requires specialized equipment. The circuit boards are sent to an approved facility in South Korea for metal recovery. The non-metallic components of the circuit boards are incinerated in a licensed facility with gas scrubbers to remove toxic product. Some ash and slags from the process are sent to secure landfill. Slag is typically a silicate glass and when stabilized and made insoluble in high temperature processing it will not leach substances of concern. In some cases it may be safely used as a building or road construction aggregate.

Batteries
Batteries, which must always be removed from the handset in the early stages of any recovery and recycling process, can be safely recycled. MRI sort and accumulate the batteries before sending them to KOBAR in Korea for processing. The batteries are hulled to remove any excess plastics. The excess plastics are either land filled or recycled where demand permits. The remaining material is incinerated and smelted. The plastics provide a fuel source for the incineration process and the metals are smelted in special distillation pots that recover:

• cadmium in pure form to produce new batteries,
• nickel and steel in alloy form for use in stainless steel fabrication, and
• cobalt from lithium ion batteries for new batteries.

During the smelting and incineration process quantities of ash and slag are created and are tested for heavy metal contamination and either sent to secure landfill or, if clean enough, used in such applications as road base.

Handset housings/casings
The ABS–PC plastics from mobile phone housing and casing are used by Australian Composite Technology (ACT) to make new composite plastic products. ACT shreds and granulates the housings and casings to remove the metals and then blends the extracted plastics with other feedstock to produce a range of composite plastic products including fence posts and pallets. The metal residues recovered are recycled.

Accessories & chargers
Accessories including AC adaptors, car chargers and car kits are collected through the program. These are accumulated and sent to a steel recycler for metal recovery. The metal recovered is source separated into ferrous and non-ferrous metals and goes into a range of application for use both here and overseas.
Plastics and other shredder flock from shredding at this stage are sanitized then placed in land fill. Thus any residual waste disposed of in landfill is rendered inert and poses no harm to the environment. It is intended to undertake trial batching of product for shredding to enable recovery of the flock from the shredding process for treatment by the plastics recycler outlined above.

To learn more about the steps in the recycling process visit www.mobilemuster.com.au or the life cycle of mobile phones visit www.mobilemuster.com.au.