Recycling Phones & The Environment

It is a great time to recycle your mobile phone, you can earn money for those all important pounds which you need at christmas! You can earn up to £200 from online companies such as mobile phonee xchange, where you just simply post your phone to them. They even take damaged phones.

With all the hi-tech waste that’s generated these days, it’s good to know that there are easy ways to dispose of your old mobile phones, which are harmful to the environment if you just chuck them in the garbage. With today’s increasingly green-conscious world, more people are looking for ways to help out and make it a cleaner, safer place for the next generation. Like all electronic devices, mobile phones contain heavy metals that, if allowed to leech into the soil, will pollute the environment with potentially disastrous results down the road.

Recycling also means that materials that have already been taken from the environment via mining and so forth are reused, thereby cutting down on the drain on the earth’s resources, which are not, contrary to what some people seem to think judging by their throw-away attitude, infinite. Recycling hi-tech waste like old mobile phones also saves energy since raw materials don’t have to be refined, and refining is extremely energy intensive. It also means that the cost of electronics will decrease without the use of raw materials and their expensive extraction methods, plus recycling creates jobs.

If you’re not sure how to have your old mobile phone recycled, Apple has a free programme that makes it really easy to do. All you have to do is visit their website and fill in a form, and they’ll send you a prepaid address label, which you just print and stick to your package, then simply chuck it in the mail and they take care of the rest. It’s good to know that some manufacturers are prepared to offer free disposal of mobile phones and the like to help preserve our environment. Now it’s up to us to make use of this and help keep our environment safe for our kids.

We recommend using an online service such as mobilephoneexchange, to earn back money as you recycle!

Majority of Mobile Phones not Being Recycled

Global consumer survey reveals that majority of old mobile phones are lying in drawers at home and not being recycled!

This is from a Nokia press release I got sent. Come on People, RECYCLE your old mobiles. You can sell them on ebay, or send them off for recycling. We don't want mountains of old mobile phones, do we? They also contain many very useful metals which can all be re-used. Please read below for more info.

Espoo, Finland - Only 3% of people recycle their mobile phones despite the fact that most have old devices lying around at home that they no longer want, according to a global consumer survey released by Nokia today. Three out of every four people added that they don't even think about recycling their devices and nearly half were unaware that it is even possible to do so.

The survey is based on interviews with 6,500 people in 13 countries including Finland, Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden, UK, United Arab Emirates, USA, Nigeria, India, China, Indonesia and Brazil. It was conducted to help Nokia find out more about consumers' attitudes and behaviors towards recycling, and inform the company's take-back programs and efforts to increase recycling rates of unused mobile devices.

Markus Terho, Director of Environmental Affairs, Markets, at Nokia said, "It is clear from this survey that when mobile devices finally reach the end of their lives that very few of them are recycled. Many people are simply unaware that these old and unused mobiles lying around in drawers can be recycled or how to do this. Nokia is working hard to make it easier, providing more information and expanding our global take-back programs." He added, "If each of the three billion people globally owning mobiles brought back just one unused device we could save 240,000 tonnes of raw materials and reduce greenhouse gases to the same effect as taking 4 million cars off the road. By working together, small individual actions could add up to make a big difference."

The findings highlight that despite the fact that people on average have each owned around five phones, very few of these are being recycled once they are no longer used. Only 3% said they had recycled their old phone. Yet very few old devices, 4%, are being thrown into landfill. Instead the majority, 44%, are simply being kept at homes never used. Others are giving their mobiles another life in different ways, one quarter are passing on their old phones to friends or family, and 16% of people are selling their used devices particularly in emerging markets.

Globally, 74% of consumers said they don't think about recycling their phones, despite the fact that around the same number, 72%, think recycling makes a difference to the environment. This was consistent across many different countries with 88% of people in Indonesia not considering recycling unwanted devices, 84% in India, and 78% of people in Brazil, Sweden, Germany and Finland.

The survey revealed that one of the main reasons why so few people recycle their mobile phones is because they simply don't know that it is possible to do so. In fact, up to 80% of any Nokia device is recyclable and precious materials within it can be reused to help make new products such as kitchen kettles, park benches, dental fillings or even saxophones and other metal musical instruments. Globally, half of those surveyed didn't know phones could be recycled like this, with awareness lowest in India at 17% and Indonesia at 29%, and highest in the UK at 80% and 66% in Finland and Sweden.

Mr Terho said, "Using the best recycling technology nothing is wasted. Between 65 - 80 per cent of a Nokia device can be recycled. Plastics that can't be recycled are burnt to provide energy for the recycling process, and other materials are ground up into chips and used as construction materials or for building roads. In this way nothing has to go to landfill."

Many people interviewed for the survey, even if they were aware that a device could be recycled, did not know how to go about doing this. Two thirds said they did not know how to recycle an unwanted device and 71% were unaware of where to do this.

Nokia has collection points for unwanted mobile devices in 85 countries around the world, the largest voluntary scheme in the mobile industry. People can drop off their old devices at Nokia stores and almost 5,000 Nokia Care Centers. To find their nearest take back point people can visit www.nokia.com/werecyle.

Responding to the survey findings Nokia is developing a series of campaigns and activities to give people more information on why, how and where to recycle their old and unwanted devices, chargers and mobile accessories. The company is also expanding its global take-back program by adding many more collection bins and promoting these in store to raise greater awareness.

You Can also Recycle Mobile Phones at Envirophone, mobile phone xchange and 3 Mobile.