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The environmental implications of the Galaxy Note 7 demise

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CIOL Writers
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Samsung galaxy Note 7

We all know that Samsung has called it quits over its Galaxy Note 7 series. The South Korean giant will henceforth neither produce nor sell the smartphone with exploding batteries. But have you ever wondered what will happen to the 2.5 million Note 7 units it manufactured? And what impact this massive e-waste will have on the environment.

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Speaking to Motherboard, a spokesperson for the company confirmed that Samsung is not going to repair, refurbish or resell these units ever again. “We have a process in place to safely dispose of the phones,” says the official statement.

Though on the face of it, you might think that everything looks good but in reality ‘safely’ disposing of phones isn’t as safe as you would like to believe. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers estimated back in 2013 that approximately 165 pounds of raw mined minerals are required for an average cell phone.

This figure would surely go higher for the Galaxy Note 7 as it was one of the smartest and most advanced device ever created.

Noticeably, most of the mined minerals are lost when we recycle a phone. That’s precisely the reason why mobiles are refurbished and resold than re-cycled. Barely a dozen out of the fifty gets recovered and rests of the rare earth elements are lost which tends to be the most human labor-intensive and environmentally destructive process.

What’s recovered during recycling is essentially of no value to companies but refurbishing and reselling a device brings in money. But having said that; though the cost of environmental hazard perhaps cannot be put into concrete numbers as yet but it would surely impact how we leave this planet for the coming generations.

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