What's a smartphone made of?

TED-Ed

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What's a Smartphone made of?

As of 2018, there are around 2.5 billion smartphone users in the world. If we broke open all the newest phones and split them into their component parts, that would produce around 85,000 kg of gold, 875,000 of silver, and 40,000,000 of copper. How did this precious cache get into our phones--and can we reclaim it? Kim Preshoff investigates the sustainability of phone production.

Credits:

educator: Kim Preshoff

art director, animator: Dmitry Yagodin

narrator: Susan Zimmerman

sound design: Samuel Pocreau

producers: Gerta Xhelo (TED-Ed), Vessela Dantcheva (Compote Collective)

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