Thousands of tons of electronic waste hit landfills each year as users upgrade to new mobile phones and discard the old ones.According to British newspaper The Independent, there are already 11,000 tons of unused cellular phones in the United Kingdom that have not yet been disposed of. Most of these phones will eventually be discarded, along with old laptops, portable music players and video game consoles. These electronic products are made with highly toxic metals and other chemicals that leach into the earth when discarded.
According to Thomsen, about 100 million people upgrade to new phones each year in Europe alone, even though the average handset has a life of 5 years.
To encourage phone reuse, Green Mobile asks new customers to keep using their old handset and rewards them with a lower rate than can be offered by companies that subsidize new phones each year.
Recycled phones
The prevalence of recycled phones is expected to increase as the problem of e-waste enters the public consciousness and stricter regulations force more companies to tackle the problem. ABI Research estimates that these factors, in addition to shorter handset replacement cycles and a greater demand for cheaper phones will cause the recycled handset market to be worth $3 billion by 2012, with recycled phone shipments numbering above 100 million.
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