Top Reasons To Recycle Your Old Phone

When you think of recycling it’s likely you probably think of the traditional products we’ve recycled for decades. Glass bottles, newspapers and food waste are all things that are regularly recycled but WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) or e-waste is also becoming a recycled regularly and this includes mobile phones.

WEEE recycling is governed by law in the UK to ensure businesses recycle as much WEEE as they possibly can but what about households? We’re sure many of you have plenty of old gadgets in your home that you don’t use any more and many of these will be old mobile phones. There are many benefits of recycling your old mobile phone and below are four to keep in mind when you decide to get involved with mobile phone recycling.

Stops it going literally to waste

One thing that’s worse than simply chucking your old phone in the bin is forgetting it exists altogether. Chucking your phone in the back of a drawer does nobody any good and you could be benefitting the environment as well as your own pocket in some instances as you can choose to donate your phone for cash. Have a look through all your drawers and dig out all those old phones that could be put to good use elsewhere

Philanthropic Benefits

Recycling old mobile phones isn’t all about stripping them down to their smaller parts and recycling those. Many of the companies you can donate to actually reuse the handsets for community projects or charity groups overseas. Your old mobile phone can be a valuable educational tool for people in the developing world and what’s more your product being reused means less production of new phones is needed.

Danger to the Environment

If you choose to just chuck your old phone into the bin then you’ll be risking the environment and even people’s health. Mobile phones and their batteries often contain a range of highly dangerous chemicals such as lead, mercury and arsenic. When you throw your old phone into the general waste bin it’s likely to end up in a landfill and once there all these hazardous chemicals can seep into the earth and are then free to potentially cause harm and danger. Recycling your phone properly makes much more sense and poses no danger to anybody.

Valuable Resources

As well as the many potentially hazardous chemicals in mobile phones there are also many elements which are definitely worth preserving. Materials that can be successfully recycled in your old mobile phone include gold, copper, palladium and a range of plastics which can be used for other purposes. These materials should be used for new products rather than just tossed in the landfill.

There are many schemes which will recycle your old mobile phone. It could be that your favourite charity is accepting donations or it could be you want to use a scheme that pays you dependent on model. Whatever you choose you’ll feel better off with an empty drawer and your old phones doing something good for the environment.