What to do with those old mobile phones is just one of many of life's conundrums that occupy The Margin's waking hours. Well, the Republic could take a leaf out of Japan's book. Yokohama Metals salvaged a rich pageant of metals, including gold, silver, bronze and copper, from more than three million mobile phones last year. It was obviously worth the company's while - it recovered 45 kg of gold and more than 900 kg of silver in the process. It is reckoned that each tonne of cellular phones yields almost $3,000 (€2,770) per tonne, while the cost of recovering each tonne is approximately half that.

Apparently, the salvage process is quite simple. The phones are first broken into little pieces on a conveyor belt. Then the plastic casing is removed from the electronic part, and the metal melted and separated.