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What can you do with your used mobile phone?

Bild: stock.xchng

With every new purchase of a mobile phone rises a question, what to do with the old one? Use it as a second phone? Sell it, recycle it or to dispose of it?

Recycling of used mobile phones

Bild: Vodafone

With every new purchase of a mobile phone rises a question, what to do with the old one? Use it as a second phone? Sell it, recycle it or to dispose of it?

First, a fundamental question regarding one’s own behavior as a consumer is to be posed – and this applies just to mobile phones. The question is how can anyone replace a functional product with a new one. Even if the financial effort is well with one’s limits its fair to consider that for the production of the new product consumes valuable resources and the mining probably occurs under ecologically problematic and inhuman conditions. If one does choose to purchase a new phone, the market will decide the fate of the old one.

Sell or gift it to somebody

If the phone still works, a sale through an appropriate online platform is a good option to consider:
EBay. in

For one whom it’s too much of an exercise for the payment expected from the sale, can perhaps find someone in their circle who may need your mobile phone.

Disposal

The storage in waste disposal sites takes toxic pollutants from the phones into groundwater. And if it ends up in an incineration plant the air gets polluted by poisonous toxic substances. Fortunately only a small percentage of phones end up in household waste.

Electronic devices should be handed over to recycling or collection points. The manufacturers in India have to be made responsible for the collection of electronic waste that is increasing day by day. Partly the electronic waste is declared as second hand and is being exported to countries like India, China and Ghana where workers operate in crude and potentially hazardous conditions in various recycling units. Disposal should therefore be the last option when thinking about the fate of the old phone.

Recycle and Donate

Most mobile phones end up in some table drawer after they have been replaced by the owner. . Only about 3 % of old phones are recycled by the former users. Many of us are not aware of the recycling facilities offered by our own network providers. Depending on the recycler the device is either used further in developing countries or is broken down to get back the valuable raw materials that go into making a mobile phone. Although the latter variant is problematic due to the materials used in the process but on the whole it is an eco-friendly solution to handover the old phone to recycling points offered by the manufacturers. Further information on the recycling possibilities offered by some manufacturers can be seen at:

http://www.nokia.co.in/about-nokia/environment/we-recycle
http://www.in.lge.com/AboutUs/aboutus_Product_Recycle.aspx