It has been about 5 weeks since we upgraded to iPhones, and my old contract has expired – which means my old phone is no longer required and can be recycled. Apparently there are loads of old phones kicking around in drawers and such like, and more that end up in landfill – which is a bad idea because they’re WEEE (electronic waste) and as such pretty toxic. But the good news is that they’re really recyclable, and there are lots of companies and charities out there that would like to help you recycle your old phone because they’re worth money
If your phone is working, and relatively new (and if it is, why are you upgrading????) then envirophone will give you up to £200 for it. You tell them what you’ve got, and they’ll tell you how much it’s worth and send you a pre-paid envelope to mail it in. What did they reckon my rather ancient (but still functional) Sony Ericsson T630 was worth? £0.82. It’s not worth getting out of bed for that. Or I could get £2 worth of ClubCard vouchers from Tesco, but I’m not their biggest fan.
So it looks like donating it to charity might be a better bet. The Eden Project could use it to help fund their education projects; Oxfam use them to help people in need; the Woodland Trust can apparently get a guaranteed £2.25 of tree-planting cash for each handset recycled.
Since I am a big fan of trees, I am leaning towards the Woodland Trust, unless anyone has a better suggestion?
Comments on Old phones
Comment posted by MarkD on Wed, Oct 21 2009 at 5:10am ∞
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