Chinese mobile manufacturer calls for better recycling process
Wednesday, July 30, 2014 - 09:14:51
Foxconn is one of the world's largest electronics manufacturers, although many people will not have heard of it, even if they have used one of the products that are put together at its assembly plants in China.
Devices like the Apple iPhone range are built by Foxconn, compiling components from a number of different firms and constructing everything on-site, before shipping out mobiles to international markets.
This week, the chairman of Foxconn, Terry Gou, has actively petitioned the mobile manufacturing industry in China to encourage more companies to improve the sustainability of their operations and make mobile phone and electronic waste recycling more widespread and simple to achieve, according to the Commercial Times.
Gou suggests a number of ways in which the industry can become greener, including moving over to a paperless approach to running offices, embracing the use of energy efficient LED technology, as well as pursuing mobile phone recycling, both internally and on a wider scale.
Gou points out that often the biggest problem comes once a mobile phone is out of the hands of the manufacturer, because consumers can choose to do whatever they wish with a handset. While more and more people are being responsible and recycling old phones, this is by no means a universal practice, while also being something that this executive is keen to encourage.
In China, as in the UK, there is a real need to responsibly dispose of electronic waste in all its forms. Gou said that less than one per cent of the 100 million mobiles that are thrown away in China each year get recycled, so he would want to see action taken to address this mounting problem.
In the UK, it is simple to sell your old phone online, at which point it will be reused or recycled as appropriate and your device will not have gone to waste.
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