The figures and statements in the Mine My Phone project are intended to be traceable to their sources. The numbered references below bring together the studies, datasets, reports, and other materials that inform the project. Superscripts in each story and metal page point to the relevant reference.
Last update: September 2026
Manufacturing — from raw material extraction and mining to component assembly and transport — is by far the largest contributor to a device’s environmental impact.
Repairing and refurbishing that device requires only about one twentieth of the raw materials needed to manufacture its replacements.
ADEME 2024 estimates that artisanal and informal mining accounts for approximately 10–20% of global cobalt production. Child labour has been documented in some of these mines.
The presence of child labour in Congolese cobalt mining has also been documented by multiple studies and investigations, including the following sources:
Although strong words are employed to characterize these circumstances, we emphasize that no court has officially ruled that these illegal acts were committed.
Mining is a major contributor, and the metals involved include cobalt, copper and nickel, all used in smartphones.
What it measures
The countries that mine the most of this material and each country’s share of total world mine production. For co-product or by-product metals (eg. gallium, indium, germanium) that are not mined directly but recovered during refinery processing, this section refers to top producing countries at the processing/refinery stage rather than mining; footnotes are included on individual metal sheets where this distinction applies
Primary sources
Calculation
Country production value divided by world total (same source, same unit, same year). Applied consistently across all metals.
How to read it
What it measures
Order-of-magnitude estimate of how much of this material is present in a typical smartphone. Not a precise figure. 4 tiers: Major (>1g) / Significant (0.1-1.3g) / Low (13-130mg) / Trace (<13mg, invisible to the naked eye).
Primary sources
Calculation
Raw ppm data converted by us to gram order-of-magnitude ranges, using average smartphone mass approximately 150g and typical component masses from published teardown literature. 4 tiers defined by us: Major >1g / Significant 0.1-1.3g / Low 13-130mg / Trace <13mg.
Limitations
Based on 2009-2019 smartphone models — current formulations may differ. Gomez et al. measures at component level; Compound Interest at device level — these two bases are not directly comparable.
What it is
Narrative summary of what this material does inside a smartphone, grouped by component.
Primary sources
Defined scoring by Back Market
Limitations
Narrative text only. Reflects 2009-2019 smartphone models.
List of metals
Aluminium, Antimony, Cobalt, Copper, Gallium, Germanium, Gold, Indium, Lithium, Magnesium, Manganese, Nickel, Palladium, Platinum, Rare Earth Elements Family, Ruthenium, Silicon*, Silver, Tantalum, Tin, Tungsten, Zinc.
These scores measure each metal’s relative level of risk compared with the 25 metals studied in the ADEME report, on a scale from 1 (comparatively lower risk) to 5 (comparatively higher risk). A score of 1/5 therefore does not mean that extraction is impact-free, but rather that it is less harmful than the extraction of other metals, within a mining industry whose overall environmental, human and geopolitical impacts remain significant.
What it measures
A score from 1 to 5 measuring the environmental damage caused by extracting and refining this material, cradle-to-gate.
Scale
Primary source
Calculation
environmental scores for the 25 ADEME metals, reproduced directly
What it measures
A score from 1 to 5 measuring human development conditions in the countries that produce this material. Reflects the situation of the populations bearing the social cost of extraction — not individual corporate practices.
Scale
Primary source
Calculation
environmental scores for the 25 ADEME metals, reproduced directly
What it measures
A score from 1 to 5 measuring the governance fragility of the countries that dominate production. Reflects structural political conditions.
Critical note
Export restrictions are shown as contextual information but are deliberately excluded from this score. The score reflects structural governance conditions, not individual political decisions.
Scale
Primary source
Calculation
environmental scores for the 25 ADEME metals, reproduced directly
What it measures
Our overall assessment of the risk that global demand will outpace available supply, combining geological depletion signals, demand growth projections, and supply chain concentration data.
Risk levels
Critical / High / Moderate / Low or declining demand / Not formally assessed.
Primary sources
Calculation
Editorial synthesis from 3 signal types: (1) Geological: GreenIT depletion dates based on reserve-to-production ratios. (2) Demand-side: IEA GCMO 2025 supply-demand gap projections. (3) Institutional: ADEME criticality scores. No single source publishes this combined indicator.
This methodology explains how Back Market calculated the environmental, human, geopolitical, and supply scores for raw materials not included in the ADEME 2024 study.
List of metals
Arsenic, Graphite, Barium, Boron, Cadmium, Chromium, Hafnium, Iron, Lead, Niobium, Strontium, Titanium, Vanadium, Zirconium.
Primary source
*Exception for Graphite - Graphite is covered by neither ADEME 2024 nor Graedel et al. (2015), so Back Market estimates its environmental score at 2/5 by comparison with ADEME-rated materials. PBL documents dust, chemical effluents and processing residues, while a peer-reviewed cradle-to-gate study using Chinese industrial data estimated 9.6 kg CO₂e/kg of battery-grade natural graphite. This is an internal proxy, not an official ADEME score, and carries greater uncertainty because impacts vary significantly by production process and energy mix. [3,10, Journal of Cleaner Production (2022)]
Primary source
We used the World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators.
Primary source
What it measures
Indicates how much of total consumption currently comes from recycled material (secondary supply) versus freshly mined ore (primary supply).
Primary sources
Secondary source (in case no covered by the primary sources)
Approximate quantitative thresholds
Limitation
Not a precise measurement. Reflects qualitative assessments in the source literature combined with available quantitative data.