YOU can help the environment by recycling your mobile phone AND also help raise funds for charities. Every phone collected will help raise funds for the charity in your state, for example the Spastic Centre of NSW was given $3-5 for the old phone I donated (below)
Australians should recycle their old mobile phones, says the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA).
A spokeswoman for the AMTA’s MobileMuster program, Rose Read, said mobile phones contained many valuable metals such as gold, silver and nickel as well as plastics.
Every 50,000 handsets yield about one kilogram of gold, Ms Rose said.
“More than 90 per cent of the materials in mobile phone handsets, batteries and accessories can be recycled into new products such as jewellery, fence posts and stainless steel.
“Mobile phones are not biodegradable and should not be thrown in the rubbish bin and end up in landfill, where potentially they could harm the environment.”
Mobile phones that are not damaged or too old are cleaned and repaired. They are then sent for re-sale in developing countries , which currently have little modern infrastructure.
All other mobile phones are environmentally recycled, with component parts available for re-use in items like jewellery and copper piping, the nickel obtained from batteries can end up being used to make stainless steel products such as saucepans. Plastics are granulated to produce items such as traffic cones.
Donations can be made by individuals, companies or other groups by contacting your local co-ordinator at http://www.mobilephonerecycling.com.au/. They will send you postage paid packaging to post your mobile phone/s in at no cost to you
This is a great post Neerav. Thank you.
I was not aware that this service was available. I hope, for the sake of the environment, that your page receives huge numbers of hits!
Neerav,
I have two kids and thus 8(!!) phones to recycle. I actually rang the 1800 number on the website because I wanted to talk with recycling people. They asked where I heard of their service and I gave them your web url. They were delighted to hear that you had written a piece on them.
Keep up the good work!
Markmcg
EDITOR: lol, 8 phones! they must go through them faster than shoes.
excerpt from SMH Good Weekend Article “Trashing the Planet”
Prove that you’re smarter than the 96% of Australians who don’t recycle their mobile phones by following the recycling instructions above and help a charity at the same time 🙂
Read more of the Btritish Guardian newspaper’s story: Dumped mobiles cause waste crisis
I work for a rubbish removal company and we used to see a surprising amount of mobile phone chucked away. Over the last couple of years that has declined which is ironic as you would think that the number of phones on the market has increased several fold. All I would say is that I think the message is getting across. My wife’s company has a mobile phone recycling ‘lady’ at work and my kids are fully aware of the need to recycle too.
Neil
I think that everybody should do their part in preserving the environment. With more and more mobile phones being released each year, it would be crucial for consumers as well as manufacturers to do something about recycling these electronic wastes instead of dumping them into the garbage. There are only sites today that can give you money in exchange for used phones. But of course, it would be better to give the monetary value to charities.