Every phone counts
By Tehmina Choudhury, Sarah Lutkin, Hannah Jones and Mary Wright
Only one in five of us are currently recycling our old mobile phones.
But one of the major growing ways of recycling your phone is by donating it to websites such as Envirofone.com, where you receive an average of £22.40 for it.
The websites offer a choice of different payments and ways to donate your phone. You can donate the money to charity; receive your money in a cheque or your bank account or as an Argos voucher which is redeemable in any store nationwide.
Even if your phone is not in great condition, vital components can be restored, or if beyond repair, will be smelted for recovering energy.
Developing countries such as the Congo will benefit greatly, as using the energy can contribute to managing the demand for precious minerals, such as coltan. With our contribution, hopefully the demand for raw materials will be cut down and animal habitats will be restored
The aim of these websites is to reduce our carbon footprints and cut down on our waste which is already being done with other methods, however, by recycling our mobile phones we are opening a whole new opportunity and helping us save energy even more than we thought possible.
Did you know:
- that each UK household has on average four mobile phones which are unused, equalling up to 50 million handsets nationwide!
- It is expected that one billion handsets will be sold each year by 2009
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