Mobile phone batteries contain toxic substances that can be hazardous to the environment.
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LONDON, England (CNN) -- A London company has created technology that automatically dismantles electronic products at the end of their life span.
Active Fasteners has for the past eight years worked with electronics manufacturers to fine tune the process, which removes toxic substances from the products so the remaining materials can be safely recycled.
A new law, which came into effect in August, requires European manufacturers to take responsibility for disassembling their products in an environmentally friendly way.
Active Fasteners' technology involves fitting the products with specially created "fasteners" at the time of assembly.
When the products, including mobile phones, games consoles and even cars, are exposed to a trigger -- either heat, electrical current or magnetic field -- they disassemble themselves.
This allows for materials that have a negative impact on the environment to be easily sorted from those that do not.
Company technical manager Habib Hussein says the new law places a lot of responsibility on manufacturers.
Also known as "shape memory alloys," the fasteners, which come in a range of sizes, are discreet and allow the product to function normally until it is exposed to the dismantling process.
"One of the things we had to make sure was that a mobile phone sitting in the back of a car in Saudi Arabia wouldn't come apart."
Hussein says his company's technology removes the need for human involvement, making the process quicker and cheaper.
"As soon as you add manual labor to something, the price goes up. These are often complex, technical products that require those dismantling them to have a lot of knowledge so that it is done in a safe way."
With this in mind he and a group of fellow researchers set about coming up with an automated solution.
LCD screens and batteries are two products that contain hazardous substances.
Hussein says that if they are not disposed of properly, they could leach into landfills, contaminating any other materials they come in contact with, creating enormous health and safety problems.
"There is not much technology that will allow you to do this automatically. In an ideal world, we would be able to crush and shred everything but these potentially hazardous substances in the products don't allow us to do this," he says.
"There is very little research about new ways to deal with end-of-life electrical equipment. I'm not even sure many ways actually exist."
Hussein says he thinks the concept will take some time to take off but some manufacturers are already showing a commitment to the new law.
He says he hopes the new law will encourage companies to consider how they can lengthen the life span of their products and to safely dispose of their products.
The new EU environmental rules, the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive and its sister directive, the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS) became law in August and will be enforced from 2005.
