How to Recycle Your Mobile Phone?

You’ve made the smart choice to get cash back for your old mobile – while doing your bit for the environment – so what happens next?

You have a range of options:

 

RE-USE

• Give it to a friend whose mobile has just broken (but make sure you tell them about this site so they’ll know what to do when they’re done with it).

• Send it to a specialist recycling company to be refurbished and resold, while earning cash back for yourself or for charity. To find the best deal, check out our comparison tool.

 

RECYCLE

	Send it to a specialist recycling company to be recycled, while earning cash back for yourself or for charity. To find the best deal, check out our comparison tool.
	Donate it to your favourite charity’s mobile phone collection scheme.

Remember that in terms of the cost to the environment, it is better to re-use than to recycle. But if a phone cannot be re-used, it is far better to re-cycle it than to bin it – and you get money back too!

 

Who Recycles Mobiles?

As awareness increases of the serious environmental damage caused by e-waste in landfill, companies specialising in safer disposal options are springing up around the world. The UK is no exception, and there are now hundreds of such recycling specialists in this country, who collect or receive obsolete and waste electrical and electronic equipment – including mobile phones – for processing in one of the following ways:

 

	Obsolete electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) that is in a good enough condition is refurbished and re-sold. Mobile phones are often exported to developing countries to be sold at locally affordable prices, bringing the benefits of improved communications to developing economies.
	EEE that is beyond repair is classed as waste electrical and electronic equipment, or WEEE, and is recycled carefully in accordance with the new WEEE regulations.

Many UK-based phone recycling companies send the obsolete or broken phones to developing countries, to be processed there. While this provides a much-needed boost to the economies of developing companies, some environmental campaigners have expressed concerns about the safety standards in some of the overseas recycling plants, and what this might mean for health of their workers. The best advice at present is to check your chosen recycling company’s policies on Health & Safety before making your final decision. In the mean time, global environmental groups continue to campaign for better standards worldwide.