Recovering handsets
Our phone recycling schemes ensure that customers, employees and the public can safely dispose of redundant handsets for recycling or re-use. These schemes ensure that the process of refurbishing or recycling phones does not result in significant amounts of waste going to landfill and equally that the refurbished phones are sold in countries where appropriate recycling schemes are in operation.
We collect redundant handsets and accessories through our retail shops, offices, and by post. We also include recycling envelopes in the packaging of phones sold through our online outlets. Returned items are refurbished for re-use or recycled, leaving only a small quantity of inert plastics, which is sent for controlled landfill. Recovered materials are listed in the chart below:
Recovered materials from handset recycling in 2004/05 (kg)
In the UK, we have actively encouraged our corporate customers to use our recycling initiative and now have 52 registered to the scheme, including WS Atkins and Autoglass. We are considering encouraging these companies to launch their own phone-recycling initiatives for their customers.
We have used a proportion of the revenues raised through our recycling schemes to support Rainforest Concern in their initiatives to preserve rainforest in Ecuador, as well as local environmental initiatives such as the National Tree Week in Ireland.
We have recovered around 170,000 mobile handsets since we began this work in 2002. In 2004/05 we collected only 22,948 handsets - a drop of almost 90,000 on the previous year. About 40 per cent of the recovered phones were refurbished for re-use and some 630 kilogrammes of materials were recovered for other uses. Airwave handsets have a five-year manufacturer's guarantee and are not subject for take-back until 2008.
Increasingly we are competing with many commercial and community organisations that collect handsets as part of their business or fundraising activity. At a time when people are changing handsets regularly, we recognise that 100 million phones could reach landfill each year in Europe alone. We acknowledge we must raise our performance here and have set a target to collect at least 150,000 handsets for re-use and recycling by March 2006.
