The iPhone 5, Now With Millions Of Tons Of E-Waste

Considering that Apple has sold more than 400 million iPhones, iPads and iPods, it's a safe bet that the new iPhone 5 will be a huge success. Once people pick up their new toys, old iPhones will end up on eBay, Craigslist and, inevitably, in the trash.

Because Apple only releases one new phone a year, we’re about to see a mountain of old phones hit the junk pile. But as Android has gobbled up market share, the new phone cycle has sped up. Samsung, which has more or less caught up with Apple in total smartphone sales with around 80 to 90 million phones sold last year in the United States, releases new phones every few months. Don’t forget the deluge of new phones from other companies like HTC, Motorola and others.

This is great for consumers. In about a decade, smartphones have replaced our point-and-shoot cameras, GPS systems, newspapers, handheld gaming consoles, stereos and more. Relentless consumerism is often good for innovation.

The downside of all of this, of course, is that it's extremely wasteful. According to an EPA report (PDF), we generated 2.4 million tons of e-waste in 2010. That includes everything from desktop computers to TVs to printers. Unlike, say, your old-fashioned newspaper, very little of it is recycled. The recycling rate for phones is especially bad, topping out at about 11 percent. Only one category of e-waste, keyboards, was recycled less.

Why bother recycling cellphones? There is a lot of valuable stuff in there. According to the EPA, recycling a million cellphones can result in $15,000 of precious metals, including 50 lbs of gold, 550 lbs of silver, 20,000 lbs of copper. Now consider that there were 6 billion mobile subscribers at the end of 2011, according to a study (PDF) by the International Telecommunications Union. There are currently around 7 billion people on Earth, so it's safe to say that cellphones have become the norm in developed and developing countries alike. If only a fraction of those 6 billion cellphone users recycled their old phones every year, you'd have a lot of minerals that wouldn't have to be taken from mines, not to mention a lot less waste in our landfills.

Then there is the environmental cost of actually building your phone in the first place. My iPhone 4 is responsible for about 45 kilograms of CO2, a result of the production, use and transportation energy costs over the lifetime of the phone.

Granted, Apple has taken positive steps since releasing its first iPhone in 2007, including packing its phones in recycled materials, using arsenic-free glass and eliminating the use of dangerous chemicals like PVC and bromine.

Still, building cellphones is doing no good for the environment. Plastics, of course, are made with petroleum. Tantalum, found in circuit boards, is mostly mined from war-torn regions of Africa. Improbably disposed of lithium batteries can contaminate water supplies. According to Mother Jones, making a .07 ounce microchip "uses 66 pounds of materials, including water and toxic chemicals such as flame retardants and chlorinated solvents."

All of this wouldn't be such a problem if we made the most of our phones, and recycled them when they finally broke down. The average smartphone user, however, buys a new phone every 18 months. That means even before their two-year contract is up, most smartphone owners are already buying whatever shiny new toy Apple or Samsung has unveiled.

Even to someone who loves new technology, this seems absurd. I tend to hold on to my gadgets until the bitter end. I had the original Motorola Droid until about three months ago. That phone was launched in 2009, which means I might as well have been carrying a giant gray brick like Zack Morris in Saved by the Bell. I kept it until the screen went completely black, at which point I replaced it with an iPhone. But the fact that my Droid was laughably outdated by 2012 is indicative of how the incredible speed of innovation predicted by Moore’s law and others is making us ever more wasteful.

Take the iPhone 5. How much better is it than the iPhone 4S? The screen is slightly larger. It's faster and can now take advantage of speedy 4G LTE networks. But think about how you use your phone on a daily basis. Checking your email will take a second instead of, say, two seconds. You'll get to see an extra row of icons when turning your phone on. The camera takes pictures at a slightly faster rate. Is it really necessary?

Despite the fact that the iPhone 5 isn't a revolutionary leap from the iPhone 4S, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimated that Apple would sell 6 to 10 million iPhone 5s in the first week.

In the words of Louis C.K. , "everything is amazing and nobody is happy." It doesn't matter how advanced or convenient our phones become; their place as status symbols – especially among us young people, who increasingly value their phones over traditional markers of wealth like cars – guarantee that people will line up outside of Apple stores and obsess over the most minor of hardware changes for the foreseeable future.

It is a strange gap in ethical vision that has young urbanites buying organic food, fair-trade coffee, and sweatshop-free clothing but chomping at the bit to buy resource-intensive smartphones made in appalling work conditions.

I, of course, am as guilty as anyone else. The sturdy flip phone I owned five years ago fulfilled all of my texting and calling needs. But I like talking to my friends with FaceTime, taking photos with Instagram and browsing through Tumblr when I'm bored. The least I can do is hold onto this thing until the screen goes black.