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Most old mobiles never recycled

A survey by Nokia has shown that hardly anyone bothers to recycle their old mobile phone when they upgrade.

According to a global survey undertaken by Nokia, only 3% of us recycle our old mobile phones.

About 4% of us chuck the old one out when we upgrade, but 44% simply keep the old one at home in a drawer and never use it, the results showed.

Nokia says that 74% of people don't even think about the possibility of recycling their old phone when they upgrade, despite the fact that nearly 72% of those surveyed thought that recycling did make a difference to the environment.

Nokia reckons that phone owners simply don't know that they can recycle their old handsets: " In fact, up to 80% of any Nokia device is recyclable and precious materials within it can be reused to help make new products such as kitchen kettles, park benches, dental fillings or even saxophones and other metal musical instruments."

It claims that 65-80% of each phone can be recycled, and even those plastics that can't be recycled can be burnt to provide energy for the recycling process, while the remainder is ground up into chips that can be used for building roads.

“If each of the three billion people globally owning mobiles brought back just one unused device we could save 240,000 tonnes of raw materials and reduce greenhouse gases to the same effect as taking 4 million cars off the road. By working together, small individual actions could add up to make a big difference," Nokia said.

Before you pass your phone on for recycling we'd highly recommend that you remove your SIM card and delete any data.

Published: TechPad.co.uk Sunday 13 July 2008, 10:00 pm
Views: 17,201 times
Filed under: Nokia recycling mobile

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