9 brands · 332 phones · 2022–2026 · sources linked throughout
Every Phone Comes with a Receipt. Most Brands Don’t Print the Full One.
What’s inside a new phone, how much of it each maker says is recycled, and who actually decides the rest. The aim is not to make you feel bad about your phone but to show where the real choices are made.
- Recycled (brand’s claim)
- Not claimed as recycled
- Not disclosed
Five things to know
Your phone
Print your phone’s receipt
Find your phone among all models from 2022 to 2026 (Pro Max, Plus, foldables and mid-range) and see what its maker has published. Pick a brand, then a model, above each receipt to line up to three phones. Tap or hover over any underlined word to see what it means.
Who discloses
Ten things a phone maker can publish. Here’s who does.
Scored only on whether it’s published, not on whether the numbers look good. A brand that discloses a bad number scores higher than one that publishes nothing.
- Published
- Partly / parent company only
- Not published
Scores are our reading of each brand’s own publications, linked under each brand above and on its receipt. Tap or click any dot (on phones, open a brand and tap “Why”) to see what we checked and where; the same evidence is in the disclosure evidence file (.csv).
How much of the cobalt in a flagship battery is recycled?
EU ecodesign rules make every smartphone maker publish a weight band for the cobalt in its battery: under 2 g, 2 to 10 g, or above 10 g. The OnePlus 15 and OPPO Find X9 Pro spec pages, for example, put their batteries in the top band. Three of the nine brands say their current flagship’s battery cobalt is 100% recycled. Apple states that it uses mass-balance allocation; Samsung and Google do not say whether they trace the material physically or allocate it on paper. The rest make no recycled-cobalt claim or publish no environmental report for the phone. Sources: EU Regulation 2023/1670, Annex II (weight bands) OnePlus 15 spec page (cobalt above 10 g) OPPO Find X9 Pro spec page, NL (cobalt above 10 g)
No claimPublishes a report on the phone but says nothing about recycled cobalt.Not disclosedPublishes no environmental report or recycled-content figure for the phone.
What independent watchdogs found
Samsung and Apple score highest on most labour and sourcing benchmarks
OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi score lower on them. On the World Benchmarking Alliance’s climate-plan grade, Xiaomi (C) scores above Apple (E). Apple has the highest grade in the two supply-chain climate rankings that assessed it: Greenpeace East Asia (2025, Samsung not assessed) and Stand.earth (2023).
Latest published results from independent benchmarks and NGOs. No brand scores perfectly on any of them.
Five years
Who’s improving
Recycled share of each brand’s flagship by weight, as the brand reports it: one flagship per year, 2022–2026. A brand with no line hasn’t published this number for any flagship from 2022 to 2026. A flagship launched late in a year (OnePlus 12, December 2023, for example) counts as the next year’s model. A “+” means the brand gives the figure as a minimum (“more than” or “at least”).
Each brand’s flagship, year by year
Inside
What 204 grams is made of
Google is the only brand here that publishes a mass breakdown for its current flagship (Huawei did for some 2022 models); this is the Pixel 11 Pro. Other flagships use broadly the same parts, though the proportions vary.
The elements
- Recovered in recycling
- Partly recovered
- Lost in recycling
Amounts are typical per phone from lab assays (University of Plymouth 2019), EU declarations and industry studies; mining shares from USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026; recycling rates from the UN International Resource Panel. Ranges reflect different phones and methods. Each element’s own sources are listed under its details.
Who decides
You are the last link in the chain, and the one with the least say
By the time a phone reaches a shelf, the decisions that matter have already been made: which mine, under what contract, with what safeguards, and whether any of it is disclosed. They are made by mining companies, governments and corporations.
Where your phone comes from
Pick a mineral to see where it’s mined
The map shows every producing country the US Geological Survey lists for 2025, in tonnes. For most minerals you can switch to reserves to see where future mines are likely to be, and for copper and bauxite (aluminium) you can also switch to refining to see who processes the ore. Countries with a policy entry below are clickable.
Where the harm happens
The allegations have an address, and an owner
The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre tracks allegations of abuse at the mines supplying transition minerals, including those in phones and batteries. It covers mining companies only, not the factories and assemblers further down the chain.
What investigators found on the ground
Who owns the mines
A few dozen companies dominate supply, and governments part-own many of them
Court and regulator records and company disclosures (guilty pleas, rulings, settlements, fines, fatal accidents the company reported) are tagged “Record”. Everything else is tagged “Alleged” and attributed to whoever made it. Links to phone brands come from the named smelter and supplier lists that brands publish: Apple’s and Samsung’s, and for Motorola those of its parent, Lenovo. Samsung’s smelter list covers the most minerals, including copper and nickel, so it links the most companies here. Google and Xiaomi publish only counts, and brands that publish no list cannot be linked at all.
Concentration and money: the key figures
Record official outcome: court, regulator, settlement or company-reported fatality Alleged claim by an NGO, journalist or community, credited to them On brand lists a phone brand (for Motorola, its parent Lenovo) names this company, or one of its plants or subsidiaries, in a published supplier or smelter list, so its minerals can end up in that brand’s phones. It shows a supply link, not wrongdoing. Other supply-chain facts are listed as supply notes, with no tag. State stake government ownership Hover over any tag for more.Tap any tag for more.
What governments control
Mining countries write the rules, sign the contracts and decide what gets enforced
Hover over any status for what it means. The colours match the law key below.Tap any status for what it means. The colours match the law key below.
On the table now
The laws that move it, and the ones being rolled back
Laws in force, bills pending and rules being weakened in the countries where phones are sold. Each says who decides.
Stalled blocked or withdrawn Pending proposed or under debate Passed adopted, not yet in effect Weakened scaled back In force law that applies now
A pattern from other industries
The claims
What’s going around, checked
The harm in mining is real. Here is what the published evidence shows, claim by claim.
False contradicted by the evidence Misleading true in part, false impression Partly true some of it holds Contested disputed or still open Not supported no evidence backs it
Solutions
No guilt required. Owning a phone isn’t the problem. Here’s what helps.
Caring where your phone comes from matters. The biggest changes come from laws and industry, and they happen when people push for them, which is where a voice counts most. For your own phone, keeping it longer spreads its mining and manufacturing over more years. No company paid to be listed here, and we earn nothing from any link.
For policy makers and advocates
The levers that change what happens at the mine
For each lever: what it is, what is already law, what the evidence shows, the gaps, and the options that experts and campaigners propose, each credited to whoever proposes it. Every point links to its source.
Starter library
Datasets you can use
Method
How to read this
How it was checked. Figures come from primary sources wherever possible: company environmental reports, the EU’s product-label database (EPREL), SEC filings, court and government records, USGS and IEA data, and reports by named NGOs. Where we rely on news coverage, it is named as the source. Each figure was then re-checked by a separate pass that tried to disprove it; anything that couldn’t be confirmed was corrected or removed. Sources are linked beside the figures and listed in full below.
Recycled figures are the brands’ own claims. Most are verified by a third party against ISO 14021 definitions, but a brand can count factory scrap (pre-consumer) and old products (post-consumer) the same way. Where a brand says which, we say so. Company-wide averages are shown in grey and never counted as a claim for a specific phone.
Carbon totals are not like-for-like. Brands model different storage sizes, regions and electricity grids. The same Motorola phone is 36 kg in France and 47 kg in Argentina, mostly because of the local grid. Compare a brand with itself, not with others.
How disclosure is scored. Ten items, each scored only on whether it is published: 1 point if the brand publishes it itself, ½ if only a parent company publishes it, if it covers some models but not the flagship shown, or if it gives counts without names; 0 if not published. Scores say nothing about whether the numbers are good.
“Not disclosed” means not published. It doesn’t mean the material isn’t recycled, only that the company hasn’t told anyone. Allegations are allegations: court and regulator records and company disclosures (pleas, rulings, settlements, fines, reported fatal accidents) are tagged “Record”; everything else is tagged “Alleged” and attributed to whoever made it.
Where the phone specs come from. Environmental figures come only from the brands’ own reports and EU label sheets. Basic specs for older or regional models (weight, launch month, frame material) sometimes come from GSMArena, a long-running phone-spec database, where the brand’s own page no longer lists them.
Launch dates. The month shown is the phone’s first announcement. Some brands launch in China months before Europe or the US, so a phone may appear a year earlier than you remember.
Which phone is “current”. Each brand’s newest flagship with published EU label data as of September 2026, unless an older flagship in the same series has more published environmental data. vivo’s X300 Ultra (March 2026, on sale in Europe from May 2026) and its X500 series (September 2026) are not covered by vivo’s X300 and X300 Pro environmental report, and vivo has published no report for them, so the X300 Pro is shown. OPPO’s Find X9 Ultra went on sale in Europe in May 2026 with an EU label, but it has no more published environmental data than the Find X9 Pro shown here (neither has a recycled-content figure or an environmental report), so it would not change OPPO’s results; OPPO’s Find X10 series launched in China in September 2026 with no environmental data yet. Huawei’s newer Mate 80 and Pura 90 series have no published environmental data or EU label yet, so the Pura 80 Ultra is shown. OnePlus stopped launching new phones in Europe in July 2026, so the OnePlus 15 remains its newest flagship with an EU label. EU repair classes are self-declared by the makers; a September 2026 review of 2,334 EU database records by iFixit and Right to Repair Europe found about 80% lacked the required repair information (source).
Brands Outside This Comparison
Two phone makers that aren’t among the nine brands compared here: Transsion, one of the world’s biggest phone makers, and Fairphone, as a point of comparison.
Beyond these nine brands: Transsion. Transsion (Tecno, Infinix and itel) rose to fourth place in global smartphone shipments in Q3 2025, up 12% year on year, according to Omdia, which describes it as Africa’s largest smartphone maker; Omdia’s full-year 2025 top five (Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, vivo with 105.3m units and OPPO with 100.7m) did not include it. Its 2025 ESG report (published 28 Mar 2026) gives Scope 3 emissions for the first time (about 1.50m t CO₂e of a 1.53m t CO₂e total) but sets no reduction target yet. On minerals, it says it complies with US Dodd-Frank section 1502 reporting and carries out “ad hoc” conflict-mineral due diligence; we found no smelter list and no recycled-content share for its phones in the report. Sources: Omdia, global smartphone market Q3 2025 (30 Oct 2025) Omdia, Africa smartphone market Q3 2025 (27 Nov 2025) Omdia, global smartphone market 2025 (29 Jan 2026) Transsion 2025 ESG Report (28 Mar 2026), pp. 17, 44, 70 Transsion ESG report index
Fairphone, as a comparison. Fairphone says its Fairphone (Gen. 6), launched in June 2025, contains more than 50% “fair or recycled” materials by weight, using its own method: recycled aluminium, copper, steel, tin, rare earths, plastics and other metals, plus Fairtrade gold, Fairmined silver and fair tungsten, with cobalt covered through a credit system rather than physical supply. The company promises software support until 2033 with at least seven Android upgrades and a five-year warranty, and iFixit gave the phone 10/10 for repairability (Jul 2025). In its 2025 Impact Report (Apr 2026) Fairphone reports nearly 150,000 devices sold in 2025 and a 29 kg CO₂e footprint for the Gen. 6; these are company claims, not independent audits. Sources: Fairphone, product page (Gen. 6) Fairphone, launch story (27 Jun 2025) Fairphone, 2025 Impact Report summary (24 Apr 2026) iFixit, Fairphone 6 teardown (3 Jul 2025)
Use this data
Every figure on this site is free to reuse, with its original sources attached to each row. Please credit “Phone Receipts (phonereceipts.org)” and cite the original sources.
Download all data (.zip) Phones (.csv) Disclosure scores Disclosure evidence Mining shares Mining companies Laws and bills Country policies
How to cite: Phone Receipts (September 2026), “Phone materials, recycled content and who decides”, phonereceipts.org. Figures are as published by each source at the date checked; see each row’s source for the original.
Terms used on this page
- 3TG
- Tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold: the four “conflict minerals” covered by US and EU due-diligence law.
- CO₂e
- Carbon dioxide equivalent: all greenhouse gases expressed as the amount of CO₂ with the same warming effect.
- Lifecycle footprint (LCA / PCF)
- A life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies a product’s emissions from mining to disposal; its result is a product carbon footprint (PCF).
- ISO 14021
- The international standard for self-declared environmental claims, including what counts as “recycled content”.
- Pre- / post-consumer
- Recycled material from factory scrap (pre-consumer) versus from used products (post-consumer).
- Mass balance
- An accounting method that assigns recycled input to products on paper rather than tracing the physical material.
- EPREL
- The EU’s official product-label database, where makers register repair class, battery cycles and other data.
- RMI / RMAP
- The Responsible Minerals Initiative, an industry body, and its smelter audit programme.
- EPR
- Extended producer responsibility: laws that make manufacturers pay for collecting and recycling their products.
- Smelter / refiner
- The plant that turns ore or scrap into metal. It’s the point where supply chains can be audited.
Compiled September 2026. Corrections welcome at climatephonereceipts@gmail.com. Every claim here should be checkable, and if one isn’t, we want to know.
All sources (…)
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