Mobile phone recycling

We encourage our customers and employees to hand in phones for re-use or recycling, either by depositing them in boxes in our shops and offices or by posting them to:

UK
Freepost O2 Recycling

Ireland
Bring them to any Telefónica O2 Ireland retail store

Germany
Freepost O2 Recycling (Germany)
Greener Solutions GmbH
Postfach 900364
81503 Munchen

Our UK and Irish recycling schemes significantly reduce the waste from old phones that otherwise would go to landfill. Measurements linked to the environmental standard ISO 14001 are used to help measure recycling in a verifiable way.

The scheme allows mobile-phone equipment to be collected, refurbished and re-used or recycled, with very little unusable waste. We recommend this service to our major customers as well. Many of them find it helps them to account for their own environmental impacts as well as to support our own.

This was the first such scheme to address current legislation and the EU WEEE Directive (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive). The Directive requires mobile phone producers and distributors to be responsible for taking back and recycling old handsets and accessories in an environmentally efficient way, setting targets and requiring proof of delivery.

In all our markets where recycling schemes operate, we link with charity partnerships so that we donate funds for every phone that you bring in. For example, in Ireland we have partnered with the National Tree Council of Ireland to support tree-planting initiatives, and in Germany we work with the World Wide Fund For Nature.