你的手机用多久了？调查：我国手机平均使用寿命约2年

在北京一家二手手机回收平台工作的邵衡有一个让很多人意想不到的“特权”：他经常能接触到很多市面上最新的设备。

Shao Heng, who works for a cellphone recycling company in Beijing, feels he is in a privileged position. "I can often keep abreast of the latest mobile devices through my job," he said.

Numerous electronics enthusiasts join long lines to buy the latest handsets, but some of them visit Shao's store to sell their devices soon afterward, the 28-year-old said. People buy new phones to see how good they are, but then sell them simply because they feel the handsets are too heavy, or they don’t like the color, Shao said.

Chinese people don’t seem to hold onto their phones long. According to a recent survey of 3,348 people by the Society of Entrepreneurs and Ecology, an NGO based in Beijing, 43.4 percent of Chinese people change their phones just one to two years after buying them.

In 2020, some 460 million cellphones were lying idle in China, resulting in huge wastage, as many of them could still be used. The components in the handsets were in good condition and were available for recycling for raw materials such as plastic and precious metals.

Zhu Liyang, president of the China Association of Circular Economy, said research by his team shows that 6 billion mobile phones will no longer be in use in China by the end of 2025. These devices, which contain toxic and harmful substances, including lead and mercury, will pollute soil and groundwater if they are abandoned, posing health risks, Zhou said at a recent news conference in Beijing. But, he added, there is an upside to the situation.

Some 4,000 metric tons of plastic, 3,000 tons of steel, 1,000 tons of copper, 30 tons of silver and 1.5 tons of gold, along with other precious metals such as tungsten, cobalt and palladium, can be produced from recycling every 100 million devices that are no longer in use. Still, Zhu stressed that reusing these phones is an eco-friendlier solution. If a consumer chooses to use a second-hand phone instead of buying a new one, it will help reduce carbon dioxide emissions, he said.

However, Zhu added, "Most of these devices are not effectively used or properly disposed of."

Research by the China Association of Circular Economy shows that 54.2 percent of mobiles are left idle at people's homes. Zhu confirmed that a major reason for this is fears over personal information leaks.

Wu Yufeng, dean of the School of Circular Economy at Beijing University of Technology, said that in recent years, breakthroughs have been made in the technologies used for information removal. The main problem behind people's reluctance to sell phones they no longer use is that they sometimes don't trust those who remove their information. Wu said that to end these concerns, the government should draw up technological standards and introduce official authentication for the removal of information.

Stressing that people have an emotional attachment to their phones, Wu also called for manufacturers to improve their designs. "The mobile phone is not just a device. It contains records of people's work, along with photos and videos about their lives," he said. Wu added that one way to address mistrust and leave photos and videos intact is to make it easy for people to dismantle the storage hardware in their phones and read it via computer.