Even recycling all of the metals would not be enough to meet the relevant recycling target of the European WEEE directive, which is 65% for IT and telecommunications equipment
(category 3 products) plus an additional 10% energy recovery [3]. To meet this target, it would be necessary to also recycle the plastics and ceramics fraction of the cell phone. In the current recycling practice, the entire cell phone is being crushed without any prior disassembly.
The crushed handset is then smelted together with other copper-rich feedstock. Meeting the 65% of mass recycling target would require additional disassembly and separation steps and most likely even redesign of the handset [51]. This is unlikely to happen, however, since requirements of the WEEE directive apply to equipment categories as a whole and not to individual product types
like cell phones. Since cell phones make up only a small fraction of category 3 WEEE, it will be much more costeffective to focus product and process redesign efforts on other (bulkier) category 3 products like computers.