Refurbished electronics extend the useful life of devices that might otherwise become waste. The strongest available figures focus on mobile phones: demand is growing, repair and reuse remain uneven, and the environmental case is closely tied to avoiding new manufacturing.
Contents
- Refurbished electronics market outlook
- Consumer adoption and purchase intent
- Repair, reuse and dormant devices
- Environmental and carbon benefits
- The global e-waste baseline
- Recovered materials and circularity
Refurbished electronics market outlook
Mobile phones provide the clearest proxy for the wider refurbished-electronics market, although these figures should not be treated as measurements of every electronics category. The GSMA report, Rethinking Mobile Phones: The Business Case for Circularity, projects that the global used and refurbished smartphone market will grow by more than 10% annually through 2027. Analysts cited in the same 2025 report project near-term mobile-phone repair-market growth of 5% to 10% annually.
The GSMA market outlook says the global market for circular mobile devices and services, including repair and refurbishment, could exceed $150 billion by 2027. More than 1.2 billion new smartphones were sold in 2024, and manufacturing those phones generated more than 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. Consumers globally were also reported to be keeping mobile devices for about one year longer than a decade earlier.
The direction of travel is visible in recent market performance. Used-smartphone sales grew 6% in 2023 while sales of new handsets declined 4%, according to the 2025 GSMA report. At the operator level, 90% of surveyed mobile operators already ran at least one circular business model; refurbishment and e-waste management were the most popular types. Even among operators with refurbishment programs, 80% said much more could be done to scale them.
Consumer adoption and purchase intent
Refurbished phones are attracting interest, but new devices still dominate current ownership. In the GSMA’s 2025 report survey, 86% of consumers had acquired their current phone new, compared with 10% who acquired it used and 4% who acquired it refurbished. The surveyed refurbished share was highest in France at 17%, followed by Germany at 10% and the United Kingdom at 9%.
Future intent was higher than past adoption. About 10% of surveyed consumers were very likely to consider a refurbished phone for their next purchase. That figure exceeded 20% in India and reached 13% in the United States. Cost remains a central motivation: about 50% rated cost savings as a very important benefit, while 40% said refurbishment could let them buy a higher-end model than they could afford new.
Expected savings varied. Twenty-one percent expected a refurbished phone to cost 10% to 20% less than a new phone, and 26% expected savings of 20% to 30%.
Environmental considerations also influence willingness to buy. Sustainability was important to 85% of surveyed consumers globally, compared with 73% for device aesthetics and 67% for AI capabilities. Around 70% were willing to pay a premium for an environmentally friendlier mobile phone, and 30% were willing to pay more than a 10% premium. The latter share was 49% in India and 44% in China; in India, 14% were willing to pay more than a 20% premium.
| Consumer measure | Survey result | Period or scope |
|---|---|---|
| Current phone acquired refurbished | 4% | GSMA 2025 report survey |
| Very likely to consider refurbished next | About 10% | GSMA 2025 report survey |
| Very likely in India | More than 20% | GSMA 2025 report survey |
| Cost savings rated very important | About 50% | GSMA 2025 report survey |
| Willing to pay an environmental premium | Around 70% | GSMA 2025 report survey |
| Sustainability important | 85% | GSMA 2025 report survey |
The GSMA report describes these as survey results; it does not separately state a fieldwork window for the survey passages cited here.
Repair, reuse and dormant devices
Repair is a major route into refurbishment. Sixty-four percent of surveyed consumers said they had needed a repair for their current or previous phone. Among people who needed a repair, about half needed a broken-screen repair and one-third needed a battery replacement. The need was reported by 70% to 85% of consumers in developing and emerging economies, compared with below half in most advanced economies.
More than 60% of consumers who needed a repair proceeded with it. Among those whose phones were repaired, 63% used a repair shop, 16% used a mobile operator, 14% used the manufacturer and 7% repaired the phone themselves. More than one-third of people who needed a repair did not repair the phone, and more than half of that group continued using the device.
Reuse often happens informally. More than 30% gave an old phone to a family member or friend, while nearly 20% traded in or sold a used phone. Nearly one-third kept their previous phone as a backup. That backup share reached 46% in Italy, 43% in Sweden, and 41% in both Saudi Arabia and Japan.
The size of the dormant-device pool shows why collection matters. Three-quarters of surveyed consumers had at least one old handset unused at home, and 20% had at least three. Based on its consumer-survey results, GSMA estimated around 10 billion dormant mobile devices worldwide. A quarter kept an old phone because of data they wanted to retain, while a further one-fifth did not know what to do with it. Data privacy was a stated reason for retention for 37% of surveyed consumers in China, 30% in Indonesia and 25% in Saudi Arabia.
Practical incentives could improve returns. Cash and proper data deletion would each encourage 42% of surveyed consumers to return a phone for reuse or recycling, while convenience would encourage 34%.
Environmental and carbon benefits
Refurbishment can avoid much of the impact associated with making a replacement device. The GSMA’s 2025 report estimates that refurbishing a phone has a carbon footprint about 90% below manufacturing a new phone. Across the full life cycle, repaired and refurbished phones typically have 80% to 90% lower carbon emissions than new phones.
The main reason is where smartphone emissions occur. Materials and manufacturing account for about 70% to 90% of a typical smartphone’s life-cycle emissions. Extending use therefore matters even when a device needs service: using a phone for five years instead of three reduces its annual carbon footprint by about 30%, including a battery replacement. GSMA also reported that a refurbished phone has about 0.1 the environmental impact of a newly manufactured phone.
These are estimates and reported comparisons, not guarantees for every device or refurbishment process. Actual outcomes depend on the phone, repair work, replacement parts, energy sources, shipping and whether refurbishment displaces a new purchase.
Formal recycling contributes at a larger system level. The International Telecommunication Union’s e-waste overview estimates that formal e-waste recycling in 2022 avoided 93 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions.
The global e-waste baseline
The ITU reports that the world generated 62 billion kilograms of e-waste in 2022, an average of 7.8 kilograms per person. Only 22.3% was formally collected and recycled in an environmentally sound manner. About 14 billion kilograms, also described as 22.3% of global e-waste, was estimated to be trashed, mostly landfilled.
The waste stream contained 31 billion kilograms of metals, 17 billion kilograms of plastics and 14 billion kilograms of other materials in 2022. Only 1% of rare-earth-element demand was met by e-waste recycling that year. Global e-waste generation was more than 80% higher in 2022 than in 2010 and is projected to reach 82 million tonnes in 2030.
Documented formal recycling rates differed by equipment type:
- Small IT and telecommunications equipment: 22% in 2022.
- Small equipment overall: 12%.
- Screens and monitors: 25%.
- Large equipment: 34%.
- Temperature-exchange equipment: 27%.
The GSMA also estimated that e-waste generated annual external costs of about $78 billion to people and the environment in 2022. These costs show why keeping devices in use, collecting them properly and recovering materials are connected goals rather than separate activities.
Recovered materials and circularity
Dormant phones represent both a reuse opportunity and a material stock. The GSMA estimated that 10 billion dormant phones contained around 100,000 tonnes of copper, 7 million ounces of gold and 1 million ounces of palladium. At prevailing market prices, those materials were valued at about $20 billion. These are 2025 estimates tied to the report’s dormant-device calculation.
The concentration of valuable metals can be substantial. The GSMA compared about 125 grams of gold in one tonne of waste mobile phones with about 1.42 grams in a typical tonne of mined gold ore. That comparison describes material content and does not mean every tonne will be recovered at those amounts.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office’s Science & Tech Spotlight: Consumer Electronics Recycling, citing EPA figures from 2020, reported that recycling 1 million mobile phones can recover 35,274 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver and 75 pounds of gold. At commodity prices on August 12, 2020, those recovered metals were valued at approximately $100,000 of copper, $290,000 of silver and $2.1 million of gold.
U.S. selected-consumer-electronics data provides a narrower national baseline. The EPA’s Durable Goods: Product-Specific Data reports 2.7 million tons generated in 2018, of which 1.04 million tons were recycled, for a 38.5% recycling rate. The GAO, citing EPA figures, also reported that about 2.8 million tons of selected consumer electronics were disposed of in the United States in 2017 and about 36% was recycled.
The U.S. series covers the products and definitions on the EPA page, not every electronic product. Together with the global figures, it points to the same practical priority: repair and refurbishment can delay disposal, while reliable collection and recycling are needed when devices finally leave use.