Thinking of throwing out your old cell phone? Think again. Maybe you should mine it first for gold, silver, copper and a host of other metals embedded in the electronics -- many of which are enjoying near-record prices.
It's called "urban mining," scavenging through the scrap metal in old electronic products in search of such gems as iridium and gold, and it is a growth industry around the world as metal prices skyrocket.
The materials recovered are reused in new electronics parts and the gold and other precious metals are melted down and sold as ingots to jewelers and investors as well as back to manufacturers who use gold in the circuit boards of mobile phones because gold conducts electricity even better than copper.
This is common in Japan as i read from the news but i personally do it myself too, but of course not for gold and expensive metals in them but for resale of the used cell phones. But after this information i think i might just keep few of them with heavy metals in them.:) also by the way you can sell your old phones at http://www.sellyourcell.com/ or if you wanna read more about the article here is the link for it:
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/japan_metals_recycling_dc
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