Phones are a small part of a rapidly growing electronic-waste stream. In 2022, the world generated 62 billion kg of e-waste, but only 22.3% was documented as formally collected and recycled. Phone-specific global tonnage is not reported separately in the available global assessment; mobile phones are included in the small IT and telecommunications equipment category.
Contents
- The global e-waste gap
- Where phones fit in the small-device stream
- What people do with old phones in the EU
- Age and country differences
- Materials recovered from discarded phones
- The environmental value of formal recycling
- Policy and the 2030 outlook
The global e-waste gap
The Global E-waste Monitor 2024 reports that global e-waste generation reached 62 billion kg in 2022. That equals an average of 7.8 kg per person. The documented formal collection and recycling share was 22.3% of the total mass.
The long-term trend shows why phone recycling matters even when a single handset is light. Global e-waste increased from 34 billion kg in 2010 to 62 billion kg in 2022. Over the same period, documented formal collection and recycling rose from 8 billion kg to 13.8 billion kg. The Global E-waste Monitor describes e-waste generation as growing almost five times faster than documented formal collection and recycling between 2010 and 2022.
Regional results differ substantially. Europe generated 17.6 kg of e-waste per person in 2022, the highest regional level reported, and documented collection and recycling of 42.8% of its generated e-waste. African countries documented less than 1% of their e-waste as formally collected and recycled in the same year. These figures describe total e-waste, not a phone-only recycling rate.
Where phones fit in the small-device stream
The UN summary of the Global E-waste Monitor places small devices at 33% of global e-waste in 2022, equal to 20.4 million tonnes. Only 12% of that small-device stream was recycled. Small devices are therefore a large category, but the category-wide figure should not be read as the recycling rate for mobile phones alone.
The narrower small IT and telecommunications equipment category explicitly includes mobile phones along with laptops, GPS devices, and routers. It weighed 4.6 million tonnes in 2022 and had a 22% documented collection and recycling rate. This is the closest category-level global indicator for phones in the available assessment, rather than a separate worldwide phone total.
The same assessment reports that Asian countries generated about 30 million tonnes of e-waste in 2022, roughly half of the global total. High- and upper-middle-income countries collected and recycled 16 million tonnes outside formal systems, while low- and lower-middle-income countries managed 18 million tonnes mainly through informal-sector activity. An estimated 5.1 million tonnes crossed national borders, equal to 8.2% of global e-waste. About 3.3 million tonnes of those shipments moved from high-income to middle- and low-income countries through uncontrolled, undocumented movements.
These flows matter for old phones because a handset can remain in storage, enter a reuse channel, or move through a recycling or informal-processing route. The global figures measure e-waste and equipment categories, not the final destination of every phone.
What people do with old phones in the EU
Eurostat’s Digitalisation in Europe – 2025 edition reports the actions of EU individuals aged 16–74 with an old mobile phone or smartphone no longer in use. In 2024, 11% recycled an old phone. A larger 18% gave or sold one outside their household, while 51% kept one at home. Another 2% threw an old phone away without recycling.
| Action involving an old phone | EU share, 2024 |
|---|---|
| Recycled | 11% |
| Gave or sold outside the household | 18% |
| Kept at home | 51% |
| Threw away without recycling | 2% |
The figures show that keeping an old handset at home was reported much more often than recycling it. Giving or selling it outside the household was also more common than recycling. A phone that is kept may still be reused or recycled later, but the Eurostat measure records the reported action at the time of the survey.
The Eurostat Green ICT report presents the same 2024 EU shares: 11% recycled an old phone, 18% gave or sold one outside the household, 51% kept one at home, and 2% threw one away without recycling. Recycling, keeping, giving or selling, and throwing away are separate reported actions; they should not be added together as a mass-based recycling rate.
Age and country differences
Reported phone-recycling behavior varied by country in the 2024 EU data. Greece had the highest reported old-mobile-phone recycling share at 25%. Czechia had the second-highest reported share at 18%. These are shares of people aged 16–74 covered by the Eurostat measure, not shares of phones by weight.
Giving or selling an old phone also differed across countries. Croatia had the highest reported share for this action at 34%, while Romania recorded 26%. Those figures describe transfers outside the person’s household and do not establish whether the phone was ultimately reused, refurbished, exported, stored, or recycled.
Age differences were visible as well. Among EU individuals aged 55–74, 13% recycled an old phone in 2024, compared with 7% among those aged 16–24. The younger group was more likely to give or sell an old phone to someone else: 23%, compared with 12% among people aged 55–74.
This produces two distinct patterns in the reported actions:
- The recycling share was 6 percentage points higher among people aged 55–74 than among people aged 16–24.
- The giving-or-selling share was 11 percentage points higher among people aged 16–24 than among people aged 55–74.
Those comparisons describe the percentages reported by Eurostat. They do not explain why the groups differed, and they should not be treated as evidence that one age group owns more phones or produces more e-waste.
Materials recovered from discarded phones
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Electronics Donation and Recycling page cites a USGS estimate from 2006 for the materials recoverable from one million cell phones. The historical benchmark estimates recovery of 35,000 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold, and 33 pounds of palladium.
Because these are USGS estimates published in 2006, they are historical phone-specific benchmarks rather than current 2026 measurements. They also describe a batch of one million phones, not the recovery from every handset and not a guaranteed yield from every recycling process.
The 2022 global e-waste assessment gives a broader materials context. Metals embedded in global e-waste were estimated at 31 million tonnes, while plastics accounted for 17 million tonnes. Other materials, including minerals, glass, and composites, accounted for 14 million tonnes. The metals embedded in 2022 global e-waste were valued at USD 91 billion: copper represented USD 19 billion, gold USD 15 billion, and iron USD 16 billion.
These global material totals include many kinds of equipment, so they cannot be assigned to phones alone. They do show why a discarded phone is more than a waste item: it can contain concentrated quantities of materials that are technically and economically valuable when recovered through appropriate systems.
The environmental value of formal recycling
The UN’s 2024 e-waste recycling summary reports that documented e-waste recycling reclaimed secondary raw materials valued at USD 28 billion in 2022. It also estimates that documented recycling avoided 900 million tonnes of primary ore extraction.
Formal e-waste management avoided an estimated 93 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions in 2022. These are system-wide e-waste estimates, not the avoided emissions attributable to one phone or to phone recycling alone. The figures nevertheless indicate the scale of material and emissions benefits associated with documented management.
The same 2022 assessment found that e-waste recycling met no more than 1% of global demand for essential rare-earth elements. Recycling can therefore return valuable materials to supply chains, but the reported result shows that it was still a very small source relative to global demand for those elements.
Policy and the 2030 outlook
The Global E-waste Monitor 2024 reports that 81 countries had e-waste legislation, policy, or regulation in 2023, up from 78 countries in 2019. Of the 81 countries with legislation in 2023, 67 used legal instruments promoting extended producer responsibility. In the same year, 46 countries had national e-waste collection-rate targets in their regulations, and 36 had national recycling-rate targets.
The outlook remains challenging. Global e-waste generation is projected to reach 82 billion kg in 2030. Under the business-as-usual scenario, documented formal collection and recycling is projected to fall to 20% in 2030. This is a forecast, not an observed 2030 result.
The UN assessment also models a stronger 2030 scenario. Raising global e-waste collection and recycling rates to 60% by 2030 would produce benefits exceeding costs by more than USD 38 billion. That is a scenario estimate, not a guarantee that the outcome will occur.
For perspective, retired photovoltaic panels are projected to reach 2.4 million tonnes in 2030, compared with 600,000 tonnes in 2022. This forecast concerns photovoltaic panels rather than phones, but it illustrates the broader challenge of managing several fast-growing electronic waste streams at once.
The available global reports do not provide a standalone worldwide phone-recycling tonnage. They do provide a consistent picture: mobile phones sit within a large small-device category, EU households often keep old handsets, valuable materials remain embedded in discarded electronics, and current policy and recycling rates are not keeping pace with projected e-waste growth.