What is inside a smartwatch?

Materials in a smartwatch

What a smartwatch of this kind most likely holds. Amounts are given in words, not weights, because content depends on the design.

How a smartwatch is recycled

The cell is sealed in under the display and is not meant to be removed by its owner, so a watch goes whole to a program that accepts devices with batteries inside.² A recycler separates the cell from the case where it can. Small cells like this typically use a cobalt-based cathode, and they are discharged and shredded with other lithium-ion batteries so that the cobalt and the lithium can be recovered.³ The main board joins other small boards bound for a copper smelter, which recovers their gold, silver and palladium along with the copper.⁴ The magnets of the haptic motor, the speaker and the charger’s alignment ring are commonly neodymium, though not every watch has a speaker or a magnetic charger. They are tiny, and recovering their rare earths would first require separating those parts from the rest of the watch.⁵⁶ The indium on the display and the tantalum in the capacitors are among the metals least often recovered from old products.⁷

More on each stream: precious metals, battery metals, magnet rare earths.

Find it in the games and recycle it

• Mine the houseSmartwatch (main bedroom)
• Sort the device wallSmartwatch (personal electronics)
• Find a recycling program near youCheck what the program accepts before you go.