# What's a smartphone made of?

- Institution: TED
- Department: TED-Ed
- Speaker: Kim Preshoff
- Year: 2018
- Level: For everyone
- Language: English
- Subjects: Earth and environment
- Source: [TED](https://www.ted.com/talks/kim_preshoff_what_s_a_smartphone_made_of)
- Licence: [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) (Non-commercial use only, and no changed versions.)
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (sources give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the source's own words)

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. \[TED-Ed Animation by Compote Collective\].

## Lectures

1. [What's a smartphone made of?](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/ted/kim_preshoff_what_s_a_smartphone_made_of/1251ac9a4047), 5 min (TED's player)