Hidden Treasure in Your Pocket: critical elements in smartphones

Tap a part of the phone

Assembled Exploded

Tap a part of the photo to explore it.

Parts explored:

Precious metals

Technology metals

Rare earth elements

Common metals & materials

On EU, US or UK critical list

What's hidden inside your phone?

Your phone is a treasure chest of chemistry. Many of its elements are critical raw materials: vital for modern technology, but with supplies at risk.

60–70chemical elements can be found in a smartphone

93%of the metal value is in gold, silver, platinum and palladium: under 1.5% of the metal

22%of the world's e-waste was properly recycled in 2022

Tap a part of the phone
Tap an element to reveal its secrets
Take the quiz to test yourself

Take the quiz

Element of the day

Quick question

Run your own repair shop Fix, sell or recycle old phones in a 2½-minute game.

What Can YOU Do?

The treasure in your phone can only be recovered if the phone comes back. Here's what you can do, best first:

Keep it longer Use a case and a screen protector, and look after the battery. For the Fairphone 5, about three-quarters of its carbon footprint comes from making it, so every extra year of use counts.
Repair it A cracked screen or a tired battery can usually be replaced. Since June 2025, new phones sold in the EU and Northern Ireland must have spare parts for 7 years and show a repair score from A to E on their label.
Pass it on Sell, donate or hand down a phone that still works, or buy a refurbished one. Before passing a phone on, back it up, sign out, do a factory reset, and remove the SIM and memory card.
Recycle it Many shops that sell electricals will take back your old phone when you buy a new one, and some large electrical shops take small electricals for free, even if you don't buy anything. Council recycling centres take them too. Find your nearest drop-off point
Never bin it Phones, vapes and batteries in the bin can start fires. In the year to March 2026, UK waste companies recorded 1,518 fires at their sites, and more than 700 were caused by lithium-ion batteries.
Spread the word Check the drawers at home, try the drawer challenge below, and tell friends and family what is hidden inside old phones.

Drawer challenge

How many unused phones are hiding in your home?

You would need about 70 old phones to collect just 1 g of gold, so every phone counts!

Estimate based on up to 53 kg of copper, 270 g of silver, 141 g of gold, 18 g of palladium and 3.3 kg of rare earth elements per tonne of old phones (Gómez et al., 2023), with about 100 g per phone. Never take phones or batteries apart yourself!

Can you run a repair and recycling shop?

Play Urban Mine: old phones come down the conveyor belt. Repair them, sell them or recycle them before they end up in landfill, and watch out for swollen batteries!

The bigger picture

880 millionunused electrical items are kept in UK homes, about 30 per homeMaterial Focus, 2025

£1 billionof materials are hidden in the electricals UK households throw away or hold ontoMaterial Focus, 2025

24.5 kgof e-waste per person in the UK, the second highest in the world after NorwayGlobal E-waste Monitor 2024 (2022 data)

22%of the world's e-waste was properly collected and recycled. Without action, this could fall to 20% by 2030Global E-waste Monitor 2024 (2022 data)

Sources & image credits

Main data source

Gómez, M., Grimes, S., Qian, Y., Feng, Y. & Fowler, G. (2023). Critical and strategic metals in mobile phones: A detailed characterisation of multigenerational waste mobile phones and the economic drivers for recovery of metal value. Journal of Cleaner Production, 419, 138099. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.138099 (open access, CC BY 4.0).

Component values, weights and metal contents on this page come from this study: 15 phones made between 2002 and 2015, with metal prices from 2021. Batteries were not analysed in the study.

Other sources

U.S. Geological Survey (2026). Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: production shares for 2025. pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2026
U.S. Geological Survey (2025). Final 2025 List of Critical Minerals. Federal Register 90 FR 50494.
UK Government (2025). UK Critical Minerals Strategy: Critical Minerals Technical Annex (list based on the Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre's 2024 criticality assessment). gov.uk
European Union (2024). Critical Raw Materials Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1252, Annexes I–II. eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1252/oj
Material Focus (2025). 5-year impact report: unused electricals in UK homes and value of materials. materialfocus.org.uk
Environmental Services Association (2026). Fires at waste sites in the year to March 2026. esauk.org
UK Government. Take back waste in store (electrical retailers' take-back duties). gov.uk
European Union (2023). Ecodesign requirements for smartphones and tablets, Regulation (EU) 2023/1670, and energy label, Regulation (EU) 2023/1669, applying from 20 June 2025 (also in Northern Ireland). ec.europa.eu
Fraunhofer IZM (2024). Life Cycle Assessment of the Fairphone 5. fairphone.com
National Cyber Security Centre. Buying and selling second-hand devices. ncsc.gov.uk
Bank of England. Daily spot exchange rate, US$ into sterling (series XUDLUSS): 2021 average $1.3757 = £1, used to convert the study's US$ values to pounds. bankofengland.co.uk
Suyver, J.F. & Meijerink, A. (2002). Europium safeguards the euro. Chemisch2Weekblad 98(4), 12–13. dspace.library.uu.nl
Murata Manufacturing (2020). Number of multilayer ceramic capacitors in a high-end smartphone. murata.com
Intel (2007). First high-volume 45 nm processors with hafnium-based high-k gate dielectric. intc.com
European Union (2002). RoHS Directive 2002/95/EC on hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment. eur-lex.europa.eu
Plastics Europe (2025). Plastics: the fast facts 2025 (share of world plastics production). plasticseurope.org
Royal Society of Chemistry. Periodic Table (element properties and history). periodic-table.rsc.org
Baldé, C.P. et al. (2024). The Global E-waste Monitor 2024. ITU & UNITAR. ewastemonitor.info
International Aluminium Institute: energy use of primary aluminium and recycling. international-aluminium.org
Omdia (2025), via OLED-info: OLED share of smartphone displays. oled-info.com
Rohrig, B. (2015). Smartphones: Smart Chemistry. ChemMatters, American Chemical Society. teachchemistry.org
EuChemS (2019). Element Scarcity: EuChemS Periodic Table. euchems.eu

Phone illustration and 3D model

Exploded-view phone illustration and interactive 3D phone model (a generic modern smartphone) created by Peter Nockemann using Google Gemini (AI generation), adapted for this resource. The 3D graphics use three.js (© 2010–2023 three.js authors, MIT licence).

Element photos

From Wikimedia Commons, resized and cropped for display. Click a name to see the original file and its licence.

Hidden Treasure in Your Pocket

Tap a part of the phone

What's hidden inside your phone?

Element of the day

Quick question

What Can YOU Do?

Drawer challenge

Can you run a repair and recycling shop?

The bigger picture

Main data source

Other sources

Phone illustration and 3D model

Element photos

Your phone on the periodic table

Urban Mine: Repair Rush

1 Tap a part of the phone

What's hidden inside your phone?

✨ Element of the day

🧠 Quick question

📱 What Can YOU Do?

🗄️ Drawer challenge

Can you run a repair and recycling shop?

The bigger picture

Main data source

Other sources

Phone illustration and 3D model

Element photos

Tap a part of the phone

Element of the day

Quick question

What Can YOU Do?

Drawer challenge