Geologists at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Plymouth in England have blended an iPhone so they could scrutinize the elements it's made from more closely. Using their specialist knowledge and skills, the researchers found that the iPhone had enough gold and tungsten in it to be classified as high-grade.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Geologists-blend-high-grade-iPhone-to-discover-it-contains-36-mg-of-gold-and-900-mg-of-critical-element-tungsten.415004.0.html
Sorry if it seams a bit pessimistic (and sorry for my english) but recycling is not a solution as it consumes a lot of energy and because a significant proportion of the materials is lost (for exemple you loose 2/3 of 1 unit of cooper when recycled). It could be a good thing that reviewers starts to understand that it has been known for a long time (officialy since de 70's with The Limit to Growth report and there is a lot that has been written about it since then) and that this is a bit to late to think about it because litteraly nobody (industrials, politicians) did anything, we just continued in the wrong direction to make everything worse everyday... The only efficient solution that we know now is to consume much less but who is realy ready for this (even me, writing this from my asus laptop).
Theodore & to all other experts:
We keep hearing a lot of energy is needed for recycling. But the amount of labor (especially child/illegally labor) & exploitation of environment needed for fresh extraction of metals is being avoided, then isn't that a big benefit. There are a lot of external costs associated to child/illegally labor & environment damage which if effectively calculated should be less than energy costs of recycling
In short even if takes more energy to recycle, there is an abundance of energy so wouldn't that be a good incentive for governments to support/legislate recycling ?