There are an estimated 85 million unused phones in the UK," said lead author Dr James
Suckling from the University of Surrey. "Each of these phones has been manufactured using
precious metals such as gold, copper and silver which are costly to extract, both in cash-terms
and environmental impact. These unused phones contain approximately 4 tonnes of gold, lost
resource that would cost £110million and an equivalent of 84,000 tonnes of CO2 released
into the atmosphere to replace.