01 June 2011

Unused mobile phones worth £2.7 billion lying around in British homes
One-in-three people are unaware that they could make money by recycling their old mobile phones, research from Orange reveals

An estimated £2.7 billion worth of unused mobile phones are in Britons drawers and cupboards, research today suggests.

Commissioned by Orange to promote their new recycling scheme, the study also found that 32 per cent of people did not know they could make money by selling their unused gadgets.

Orange calculated its figure on the basis that everybody in the UK has an old mobile phone they could recycle. There are now more mobile phone accounts in the UK than there are people.

The survey indicated 40 per cent have never recycled an old phone and 24 per cent have never even considered the possibility.

Orange claims that its money-back offers on handsets average £45 and can rise as high as £252. Other resellers online offer similar deals, and eBay says that it has sold millions of users unwanted devices.

The news comes as the European Union and local councils are both pushing consumers to recycle more of their electronic items.

So far, however, increased recycling has tended to focus on household goods: food and drink packaging is now recycled in nearly a third of all cases, compared to 72 per cent of paperwork and more than half of all books.

More than one in ten (11 per cent) said they held on to old handsets for sentimental reasons, rising to 23 per cent among 18-24 year olds. Just seven per cent of the over-55s took the same attitude.

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