UK mobile phone recycling motivated by financial rather than environmental gains
A new report published by Ovum has revealed that although mobile phone recycling rates have significantly increased in the last few years, companies and recycling schemes are driven by financial reward rather than the environmental benefits of eco-friendly waste disposal.
Ovum, a telecoms analyst company, found that the number of old or unwanted handsets being diverted from landfill through recycling or reuse had literally doubled between the years 2008 and 2009. Approximately eight million phones were recycled in the UK last year, nearly double the amount collected the year before.
Their report, ‘Please replace the handset: mobile phone recycling in the UK’ also revealed the reasons why competition in the phone recycling market had become so fierce:
“The influx of the purely commercial driven players has resulted in pressure on charities and fundraisers, as well as the mobile operator schemes. We’ve seen non-mobile phone recycling scheme (MPRS) schemes generating fewer handsets than before despite the overall market growing considerably,”
The research also found that more phones are being recycled because consumers are increasingly aware of the cash value they can get for sending their old handsets to recycling schemes, especially during the difficult recessionary period.
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