Synopsis:

00.00-00.51
Opening titles.

00.52-02.03
Customer choice - 'vox pop' interviews with young people explaining their choice of mobile phones and how often they change them.

02.04-02.51
The components required to make a mobile phone, especially the capacitor, a device that can store electrical charge and enable a mobile phone to be small in size but fast in its functioning.

02.52-4.09
The story of coltan in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Central Africa, a rare mineral from which mobile phone capacitors are made.

04.10-05.43
The impact of the 'Coltan Boom' on the people and the wildlife, especially gorillas, living in the National Parks - vast regions of wilderness and forest and the only areas available to 'ordinary workers' to search for coltan.

05.44-07.28
The impact of the civil war that broke out in the Congo in 1998.

07.29-08.38
The response of the United Nations, charities and the mobile phone companies (Sony, Ericsson and Nokia) was to call for a total ban on coltan from the Congo and some European charities even called for a total ban on all trade with the Congo.

08.39-09.56
By 2002, the boom was over and the price of coltan plummeted - one kilo of coltan was only worth 10 cents. The impact on the miners was devastating and created a desperate situation.

09.57-10.55
The response of the UN and the phone companies to the collapse of the Coltan market and the creation of new small-scale employment projects.

10.56-11.28
Greg Cummings, a director of a charity fund argues that the companies that have profited from the Congo's resources should contribute to funding these employment projects.

11.29-12.45
A companies' spokesperson presents the companies' case.

12.46-13.35
Producing 'gorilla-friendly' and 'chimpanzee-friendly' coltan and electronics.

13.36-14.48
Consumers replace mobile phones at a remarkable rate because the phone companies subsidise the cost of new phones and every year in the UK 15,000,000 mobile phones are discarded - the equivalent of 1,500 tonnes of hazardous waste in landfill sites.

14.49-18.56
Recycling and re-using mobile phones - Shields Environmental Ltd; one of the biggest recycling companies in the UK. Recycling and re-using mobile phones will ultimately reduce the speed at which we use up valuable resources. The recycled phones can also be sold on to developing countries at affordable prices.

18.57-23.46
The recycled mobile phones are sold on to Romania, one of Europe's poorest countries. A communications revolution has been created, especially among the young. However, it is among traditional workers that the impact of mobile phones has had the greatest effect. A nurse illustrates how her mobile phone has transformed the way in which she works.

23.47-end
Credits