Introduction

You might have heard a little about recycling in the past, but did you know that you might be saving the life of a Gorilla by choosing to recycle certain items?

Yes! There has been a rapid decline in the number of Gorillas in Congo (where they are commonly found) and it has been attributed to the production of mobile phones.

How does this decline have to do with mobile phones?

Cell phones are made using the coltan mined from the Republic of Congo. The continuous mining of coltan results in the death of Gorillas, the planet’s biggest primates, as the coltan is found in their skins as well.

Gorillas are literally the sacrifice for the amazing phones you use today. In the year 2009, 300 Gorillas were killed as a result of coltan mining.

There are over 270 million cell phone users in the US alone and about 4.1 billion globally. The forecast of phone users (2015-2020) tells that users of cell phones are set to reach 4.68 billion globally.

Each time you search for a medium to sell Samsung phones when you’re done using them; you are doing the planet a huge favor.

An average individual in the US purchases a phone every 18months. Far lower than 1% of the cell phones users dump and discard are annually recycled. If most used phones are recycled and not disposed, then the level of mining will reduce and the largest mammals on our planet will be safe once again. With the recycling of merely 30-40 phones, a substantial amount of coltan can be retrieved.