How to recycle your phone and get paid for it

Times are tight, and you've a draw full of old Nokias. What better way to pay for your next gadget than selling something you no longer need or use?

By Leo Stiles

It doesn’t matter how much you love your mobile phone, when the time comes to upgrade or replace it, chances are that it will be swiftly forgotten and end up in a drawer somewhere. Many of you might even throw the old phone in the bin and by doing so, you will increase your carbon footprint and potentially release dangerous chemicals and materials into the environment.

Most phones are made from plastic; a material that doesn’t break down easily and can last for hundreds of years while releasing a huge amount of toxic chemicals. Every phone also contains a battery containing materials such as nickel, cadmium and lithium. Lead is also present in many handsets and in some cases even arsenic, all of which makes an improperly disposed of mobile phones, a real hazard to the environment.

These chemicals can potentially contaminate water and nearly all are harmful to animals and humans. Cadmium, a chemical element found in mobile phone batteries is particularly dangerous and has been found to cause lung and liver cancer in those that have been exposed to it.

Landfill

Over one billion mobile phones are manufactured worldwide each year, with a similar number of disused handsets either being stored in consumers’ homes or thrown away in wheelie bins which end up in landfill where they are free to spill their toxic innards.

It doesn’t have to be this way, however, as there are many ways to dispose of your phone without poisoning the local wildlife. The first way to safely get rid of your old phone is to bring it along to a recycling centre where it can be disposed off in accordance with EU regulations.

A much more appealing alternative is to sell you old handset to a recycling company such as Envirofone.ie or Fonebank.ie, who will pay a surprisingly decent amount of money for knackered  mobiles and could well offset the cost of trading up to that smartphone you’ve had your eye on for the last few months.

We asked Envirofone.ie to give us a price on an 8GB iPhone 3G that was two years old. They came back with a not insignificant €162.75 which would be on average two thirds of the price of buying a new smartphone on a contract. A HTC Hero was quoted at €98 and a Nokia N95 came in at €71.

Older phones are traded at lower prices but even then, the benefits of recycling your old phone is pretty clear as not only will you be safeguarding  your environment from the perils of e-waste, you stand to make yourself a few Euro too.

All you have to do to take advantage of this is to sign up to the program through the Envirofone website, where you enter you personal details and the make and model of your mobile phone. You can choose from a variety of payment methods which includes PayPal, cheque or bank transfer.  Envirofone will then send out a freepost padded envelope which you use to send your phone off and once the handset has passed the required quality checks you will be paid within five working days.

Charity

If altruism is more your thing, then you can donate your old mobile phones to a charity such as The Jack and Jill Children’s Foundation who have been running a phone recycling initiative for the last two years. The Jack and Jill Foundation help the families of children with severe brain damage and provide access to respite care, teaching and activities.

To donate your old mobile phone to Jack and Jill, just pop it in an envelope and send it freepost to The Jack & Jill Appeal, Freepost, Ratoath Road, Finglas, Dublin 11. The foundation also accepts laptops, monitors and printers and will arrange a collection for a bulk amount of items of 10 or more.

Regardless of how you choose to recycle, disposing of your old mobile properly is a win-win for everyone and the added bonus is that you will be able to breeze past those irritating Greenpeace street campaigners with your head held high.