New research from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation shows how a circular economycircular economyA systems solution framework that tackles global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution. It is based on three principles, driven by design: eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials (at their highest value), and regenerate nature. for mobile phones could recover at least USD 2.2 billion in critical minerals across North America by 2040, while cutting waste and easing the region's reliance on newly mined materials.
The paper, Missing Signal: Unlocking a Circular Economy for Mobile Phones in North America, published with the support of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), finds that value is held or lost across the whole system — going beyond recycling alone — through design, longer use, repairrepairOperation by which a faulty or broken product or component is returned back to a usable state to fulfil its intended use., refurbishment, resale, collection and, finally, material recovery.
Mobile phones are among the most widely distributed reservoirs of high-value materials today with hundreds of millions sitting unused in North American drawers or bound for one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world. This research highlights the opportunity to get more value from what is already here, and reduce avoidable dependence on new extraction.
In North America, between 50% and 70% of phones leaving first use already enter a second life through passdown, repair, refurbishment or resale, supported by a growing market of trade-in, buy-back and refurbishment programmes. But that means 30–50% are not reliably recaptured. Under current conditions, an estimated two billion phones will reach end of life in the United States by 2040, alongside 410 million in Mexico and 180 million in Canada.
The paper includes a holistic regional study tracing how phones move through use, reusereuseThe repeated use of a product or component for its intended purpose without significant modification., collection and processing across all three countries, drawing on material-flow modelling by RTI International and consultation with more than 90 organisations across Canada, Mexico and the United States. This research identifies that value is lost across the life cycle of devices including through software design, collection challenges and processing and refining capacity.
The materials involved matter well beyond phones. They include critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements, alongside high-value metals, and they are core inputs for electric vehicles, grid infrastructure, and advanced electronics. When phones that could be reused, repaired, refurbished or recycled are discarded or exported instead, that value leaves the region, and pressure on virgin extraction grows reducing economic resilience, and carrying environmental and health costs.
The paper sets out five recommendations:
Design mobile phones for repeated and longer use and later separation
Bring phones back into circulation through trusted collection channels
Improve traceability of cross-border and secondary use flows
Expand domestic processing capacity to retain value within the region
Create stable demand for recovered materials to support investment
For policymakers, the paper points to the value of harmonising measures such as Extended Producer Responsibility, right-to-repair and design standards across the three countries, to expand value retention, reduce industry costs and simplify cross-border compliance.
For businesses in the mobile phone value chain, it shows how circularity is a growth and resilience opportunity. Recovering and reusing materials buffers companies against commodity price volatility and opens recurring revenue through refurbishment, trade-in and device-as-a-service models.
Wen-Yu Weng, Executive Lead, Critical Minerals at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, says:
"Demand for the critical minerals powering the energy and digital transitions is surging, yet their supply chains remain linear, fragile and fragmented. These transitions can unlock growth, investment and better lives, but they cannot be sustainable or inclusive if built on a linear model. This paper shows that some of our most valuable reserves are already above ground. The opportunity is to keep those materials in circulation for longer, through collaboration between industry and policy. Electronics provide the proof of concept for what we can already do today, and therefore a promising model for circularity across the wider critical minerals economy..”
Cornelis P. (Kees) Baldé, Programme Officer, UNITAR Sustainable Cycles (SCYCLE), lead author The Global E-waste Monitor says:
"The Global E-waste Monitor has long shown that documented recycling is falling further behind the volume of e-waste we generate each year. Missing Signal takes that same problem and gives it a face for mobile phones in North America. This report does the hard work of tracing where phones actually go once they leave a user's hands — into reuse, into storage, into export, or simply out of the system altogether — and it's exactly that kind of granular, upstream-focused analysis that policymakers and industry need if they want to close the gap between what we produce and what we recover.”
For further information, and to read the full paper, please visit: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/missing-signal-unlocking-a-circular-economy-for-mobile-phones-in-north-america
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Notes to editors
About the Ellen MacArthur Foundation
Launched in 2010, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation is a global charity accelerating the transition to a circular economy, one that eliminates waste, keeps materials in use, and regenerates nature to create a resilient system that benefits business, people, and the environment. By addressing today’s most pressing challenges, our ambition is to deliver systemic change in the areas of plastics and packaging, critical minerals, and fashion and textiles by 2030.
