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What’s In Your Drawer?

The dead phones in your drawer have already been mined, shipped and paid for in carbon. Find out what they contain, what they are still worth, and what every month of waiting costs you.

Step 1 — what’s in the drawer?

Add the devices you are no longer using. Most households have three or four.

Why we don’t show you one number and call it a quote. The value above is indicative, worked out from what these models currently sell for refurbished, less a typical trade-in margin. Real offers differ by buyer — routinely by 20% or more for the same handset. Our trade-in estimator compares seven Australian buyers side by side, and that is the number to act on.

Where the numbers come from. Material content per handset is from published teardown and recycling research — roughly 36 mg gold, 90 mg silver, 10–15 g copper, 6–7 g cobalt and about 1 g of rare earth elements, with around 96% technically recoverable. Tablet and laptop figures are scaled by battery and board size and are indicative. Carbon and water use the same figures published across this site: about 80 kg CO₂ and 190+ litres of water per new smartphone. Depreciation is modelled on the decline we observe in our own Best Buys price tracking, not a forecast.

Australia generates about 680,000 tonnes of e-waste a year, and the drawer is where most of it starts. Nothing about the materials inside changes while a device sits there — only who owns them, and what you get for them.

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