Reduce / Reuse / Recycle

May 17, 2010

 

Japan's Top Mobile Phone Company Experiments with Closed-Loop Recycling System

Keywords: Manufacturing industry Reduce / Reuse / Recycle 

NTT DoComo Inc., Japan's leading mobile phone carrier, conducted an experiment on recycling mobile phones from January 21 through March 31, 2010.

The project involved collecting, sorting, and disassembling used mobile phones. Then the company surveyed the effectiveness of the recycling processes, analyzed the quality of the reusable parts of the collected mobile phones, extracted and refined oil from the plastic outer bodies, and extracted gold and silver slag from the parts containing metal. Japan Environment Planning (JEPLAN), a fabrics recycling company, undertook the oil treatment and Mitsubishi Materials Corp. extracted and refined the gold and silver slag.

DoCoMo is aiming to establish a closed-loop system for recycling mobile phones by reusing parts and refining recyclable materials through chemical processing. The company has been collecting used mobile phones since 1998. In 2001, it joined the Mobile Recycle Network organized by mobile and Personal Handyphone System (PHS) companies in Japan. DoCoMo has collected 68,780,000 used mobile phones in total from FY1998 to FY2008.

NTT DOCOMO Inc. official website
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/

Posted: 2010/05/17 06:00:15 AM

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