Drag all three into the crate
01
Collection
It leaves the drawer. A pickup, a drop box, an event like the one I spoke at.
Nothing happens until it physically leaves the house. That is the whole first step.
Minjun Gim. E-waste, from waste to resource.
What is inside
Open one. See what it is made of.
Hold the handle and pull. This is one ordinary smartphone, taken apart by weight.
Press and hold
- AluminiumThe frame in your hand.25 g
- CopperEvery wire, every trace on the board.15 g
- SilverSoldered through the whole thing.0.34 g
- GoldOn the contacts, because it does not corrode.0.034 g
- PalladiumIn the capacitors. Rarer than gold.0.015 g
- Cobalt, lithiumThe part that must never go in a bin.In the battery
One phone is not much. A tonne of them holds more gold than a tonne of ore from a working gold mine.
Figures are for a typical smartphone and vary by model.
The scale
The world is not keeping up.
62Mt
of e-waste made in 2022
22.3%
documented as properly collected and recycled
$62bn
of recoverable materials unaccounted for
82Mt
projected for 2030
E-waste is growing five times faster than the recycling that is supposed to catch it.
UN Global E-waste Monitor 2024.
The process
Five steps from your drawer to a new machine.
Tap each item to sort it
02
Sorting
Sorted by type, because a fridge and a phone are taken apart differently.
A fridge and a phone go down completely different lines. Mixing them slows everything down.
Drag the copper tab to lift the battery
03
Dismantling
Opened by hand. Batteries out first, always.
A robot still cannot tell a swollen cell from a healthy one, so people do this at benches, by hand.
Drag the slider to run the separator
04
Material separation
Shredded and split into streams: copper here, aluminium there, boards on their own.
This is the moment a phone stops being a phone and becomes three piles of material.
Press and hold to pour
05
Recycling
Melted, refined, sold back to manufacturers. It becomes a machine again.
One tonne of old phones yields more copper, silver and gold than a tonne of ore out of a mine.
The fair question
People ask me this every time.
It is a fair question and the honest answer is that globally, most of it does not. Only 22.3 percent of the world's e-waste is documented as properly collected and recycled. Exporters have been caught shipping loads overseas with the paperwork faked.
Which is exactly why the route matters more than the intention.
Korea runs one of the strongest systems in the world. Producers have been legally responsible for taking their own products back since 2003, and there are named plants you can visit and a national programme that will come to your door for free. Use those and your phone does not disappear into a container ship.
Where it goes in Korea
Real places, real programmes.
These are the ones I researched and used for the collection event. Everything you just watched come apart ends up in one of them.
무상방문수거
E-Cycle Free Pickup
They come to your home and take it, at no cost. Five or more small items to book a visit, or one large appliance.
E-순환거버넌스
E-Cycle Governance
Korea's official national e-waste collection and recycling system.
한국환경공단 · K-eco
Korea Environment Corporation
Runs the national collection infrastructure and the public campaigns.
서울시 자원순환
Seoul Resource Circulation
The city's recycling programmes and waste reduction policy.
Centres you can actually visit
SR센터
Seoul Urban Metal Recovery Center
Small e-waste recycling, with tours and education.
서울새활용플라자
Seoul Upcycling Plaza
Exhibitions, workshops and facility tours.
수도권자원순환센터 · MERC
Metropolitan Electronics Recycling Center
E-Cycle's Yongin plant, with a public exhibition hall.
제주리사이클링센터 · JRC
Jeju Recycling Center
Jeju's plant, expanded in 2024 to handle solar panels.
Data and batteries
Two things to do first.
Your data comes off first.
This is the real reason phones stay in drawers. It takes four minutes.
- Back up anything you want to keep.
- Sign out of every account, starting with your Apple or Google one.
- Take out the SIM and any memory card.
- Factory reset it, then check that it boots to the setup screen.
Batteries are the dangerous part.
Never in the regular bin. A crushed lithium battery starts fires in collection trucks.
- AA, AAA, 9V. Straight into a battery collection box.
- Lithium ion and power banks. Tape over the terminals first.
- Swollen, leaking or badly damaged. Put it in a fire resistant container and hand it to a community service centre in person. Do not post it, do not bring it to an event.
Drop-off points: apartment recycling areas 폐건전지 수거함, community service centres 주민센터, subway station boxes, and selected electronics and convenience stores.
Writing
What I keep finding out.
Watch
Things worth seeing rather than reading.
About
It started with a simple question.
I grew up taking electronics apart and putting them back together. Robotics kits, then mechanical keyboards, which I built and collected until there were more of them than there was desk. Somewhere in there I ended up with a drawer full of boards and switches I no longer used, and I asked the obvious question. Where does any of this actually go?
The answer turned out to be more interesting than the question. I spoke about it at an e-waste collection event hosted with Korea's Ministry of Environment, and I have been writing about it since.
Fair questions
The things people actually ask me.
Take action
Empty one drawer this week.
Not the house. One drawer. It takes an afternoon and it is the whole thing.
- Open the drawer you already know about.
- Erase the data on anything with a screen. Four minutes each.
- Tape the battery terminals. Set aside anything swollen.
- Book the free pickup, or take it to a centre.
Tell me what you found.
I collect these. If you empty a drawer I would like to know what was in it.
Got it. Thank you.
I read every one of these.