It can, and it is, but there&#x27;s only few places on Earth where it makes sense on a larger scale. They do it in China, and I suspect that a lot of old components make their way into new phones, but haven&#x27;t seen any numbers yet.<p>Electronic components generally don&#x27;t wear much, there&#x27;s nothing that makes them unsuitable for use in new devices except that ordering new parts is probably cheaper thanks to economies of scale.<p>Come to think of it, maybe it could be changed? Recycling electronic components is mostly about melting the elements off the PCB and then sorting them to correct bins; the latter part is what usually involves humans. With proper design and sufficient automation, maybe there could be a fully-automated recycler that takes random electronics junk as input, and gives out spools of components ready to be used by a pick&amp;place machine?