Recycling a cell phone. What happens to an old cell phone when you hand it to a recycling centre.
Sunnutaisuomalainen 2020
Janne Laitinen hands over his old phone to a storage manager Vesa Vainikainen in recycling center in Kuopio. Vesa Vainikainen drops the phone to a data protection container.
Driver Marko Sinisalo loads the data protection container to his truck.
Driver Marko Sinisalo drives the data protection container to Kuusankoski service station in Helsinki.
Data protection officer Sami Hukkanen dismantles the phone at Kuusankoski service station in Helsinki.
Data protection officer Sami Hukkanen removes the battery from the phone and makes sure that SIM and memory card slots are empty.
Dismantled phones before going in to the crusher.
Process attendant Gerd Jannasch drops the phones in to a crusher.
First the crusher grinds the phones in to chaff.
The chaff goes through a magnet which seperates iron from the chaff.
End product is a mix of metals and plastic. The most important metal is copper, but the mix also contains gold, silver and palladium. The end product is sellable goods to Kuusankoski and it sells the mix to copper processors.