Mobile phones - a continuing story of waste
The first blog I wrote for the Sunday Sun was on how to recycle your mobile phone, I was prompted to write it because of the launch of the first iPhone from Apple.
I thought I would return to the subject following the launch of the 3G iPhone this month.
Apple estimate that 1 million iPhones were sold worldwide in the launch weekend. What has happened to all those old phones? How many people have dumped their old iPhone or their old phone in favour of the new 3G iPhone?
Nokia estimates that the number of unused mobile phones (worldwide) will reach 155 billion this year. The average cell phone has a lifetime use of 18 months, a lifetime that will get shorter as newer phone are brought out at a faster rate: for example the original iPhone was first launched in the States on 29 June 2007 with the new 3G iPhone being launched on 11 July 2008.
Of course this is not just an Apple problem, the iPhone is merely the latest mobile to hit the headlines. All mobile phone manufacturers seem to be hell bent on product innovation.
What I said in my original blog about places to recycle your old phone still hold true, so go there for more advice.
For two examples of what a phone manufacturer and a retailer are doing on the recycling front have a look at Nokia and Carphone Warehouse.
Nokia (one of the leading mobile phone manufacturers) has recognised the phone-recycling problem and offers a variety of recycling options on its website.
As does the Carphone Warehouse
Essentially, all the major mobile retailers will take your old mobile phone back for recycling. Perhaps, if they offered money off the new phone it would tempt people into taking their phones to be recycled.
Or you could just make do with a knitted one.
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One way we can recycle cellphones is by trading the old one at the time of buying a new one. In that way we return the old, used phone to the factory and they will know how to handle appropiately the plastic of the phone.
I certainly know I have around 5 earlier old mobile phones, each increasing in size, some as old as 12 years. The Nokia mobile Nokia I've got looks around 3 times the size of the latest mobiles.
as of now I did trade in 2 nokia mobiles of mine with www.fonebank.com last year.
lets recycle and keep the environment clean.
Yeah i read that only 3% bof people recycle there phone and that alot of people are not even aware that you can get cash for your old mobile phones....that means there is a lot of wasted cash earning potential.