Recycling your old phone should be getting cheaper. After all, electronic waste is the fastest-growing waste stream in the world, having almost doubled in the last decade, and recycling technologies have advanced rapidly. With this kind of scale, many industries, from solar panels to batteries, have seen sharp cost declines. Yet the opposite is happening with some modern electronics, such as phones, whose recycling can cost more today than for their simpler predecessors. The problem lies not in the recycling process, but in product design: devices are more complex, miniaturized, and harder to disassemble than ever.
Take the smartphone. Longitudinal studies on recycling costs are scarce; however, a recent life-cycle cost analysis found that recycling a modern smartphone costs approximately USD 6.60 per device, compared with USD 2.34 for a basic “feature” phone. This threefold cost gap reflects the greater material complexity of modern smartphones compared with simpler feature phones. Added functionality, tighter integration, and smaller components make them more expensive to dismantle and recycle. Bruno et al. (2022) further show that dismantling costs per kilogram have increased, while the market value of recoverable materials has decreased, rendering manual dismantling economically unprofitable at average EU labor rates. Recycling has thus become progressively less profitable, despite technological improvements.
Recyclability depends on the proportion and recoverability of valuable materials in a product, and these have been declining. Gold, silver, palladium, and neodymium are the primary economic drivers of e-waste recycling, despite representing only a small share of device mass. Earlier studies estimated that the gold content had halved, from about 0.06% in 1992 to 0.03% in 2006. More recent work on printed circuit boards (PCBs) confirms that gold and silver remain modest in concentration relative to overall mass, while palladium levels have declined in some Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) streams.
Recoverability has also worsened as metals are spread across multiple miniaturized components—such as cameras, speakers, and vibration units—rather than being concentrated in easily removable circuit boards. The shrinking mass of these boards further reduces total recoverable metals, even if the concentration per kilogram is similar. Increasingly, components are sealed in with adhesives, solder, and proprietary fastenings, making them harder to access and often requiring specialized tools or custom processes for each model.
Design complexity undermines recycling by making valuable materials harder to access, increasing the time, labor, and equipment required for disassembly, and dispersing recoverable metals across numerous small parts. As a result, many high-value materials end up in landfills or in recycling streams that lack the technology to recover them. Recent reviews confirm that although precious and critical metals are embedded across diverse components, low concentrations, mixed materials, and complex assemblies continue to severely limit practical recoverability.
Rare earths: valuable, critical, and mostly lost
Rare earth elements—a group of seventeen metals essential to modern electronics—are a telling example. Despite their name, they are relatively abundant in the Earth’s crust but rarely found in concentrated deposits, making them costly and environmentally damaging to extract. Production generates toxic waste and radioactive byproducts, prompting many countries to scale back mining operations. Meanwhile, China, with large reserves and lower costs, has become the dominant supplier. Earlier this year, China restricted exports of key rare earths in response to tensions with the United States—a move that disrupted supply chains and underscored how dependent modern technologies and economies have become on a few critical minerals.
Given their high value, one might expect rare earths to be widely recovered from old electronics. Yet less than one percent is recycled. New processes—from chemical extraction in Switzerland to magnet recovery in Northern Ireland—and corporate investments, such as Apple’s USD 500 million U.S. program, offer hope. But the core problem remains, as modern devices are rarely designed for recycling. No matter how advanced chemistry becomes, we cannot recycle what we cannot access.
From design for production to design for recyclability
If recycling costs are to decrease and recovery rates increase, change must begin before products reach the market. Today, most devices are engineered for performance, aesthetics, and low production cost—not for disassembly or material recovery. Designing for recyclability means using standardized fasteners, modular components, and clear material labelling so valuable parts can be removed quickly and without damage.
Policies can drive this shift, but progress has been slow. For much of the past two decades, regulations focused on energy efficiency, with recyclability addressed only indirectly—such as through e-waste collection targets in the WEEE Directive. The former European Ecodesign Directive, for example, primarily focused on reducing energy consumption. These measures had little influence on how products were built.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) programs used worldwide require manufacturers to fund or manage recycling. While some policy visions viewed EPR as a means to encourage better product design, in practice, most schemes prioritize meeting collection quotas over redesigning products. Without strong incentives or penalties, it is often cheaper for manufacturers to pay into recycling systems than to change their designs.
Some experts call for stronger measures: mandatory design-for-disassembly standards, eco-modulated EPR fees that penalize hard-to-recycle products, or even banning designs or materials that make recycling effectively impossible. Change is starting, but its impact is unclear. The new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), adopted in 2024, makes recyclability a formal design requirement. It will require manufacturers to design products for easier dismantling, avoid permanently sealed parts, clearly label materials for sorting, and disclose substances that hinder recycling. Small electronics, information, and communication technology devices are among the first products slated for detailed rules. Complementary measures—such as right-to-repair laws that require manufacturers to provide repair information, diagnostic tools, and service parts, as well as France’s repairability index, which provides consumers with a clear score indicating how repairable a product is, helping them make informed purchasing decisions—are also pushing designs that are easier to open and service.
Still, the effect will be gradual, as detailed technical rules can take years to finalize while global electronics supply chains evolve far faster. Until such rules are applied broadly and enforced consistently, recyclability will remain more of an aspiration than a norm. Until then, the promise of a circular economy for electronics will remain out of reach—not because we lack technology, but because we continue to design products as if they will never be discarded, while producing newer models and encouraging constant upgrades. And that’s why recycling your phone isn’t likely to get cheaper any time soon.
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