Less than 10% of China’s ‘sleeping’ phones recycled

Asia – There were a total of 1.306 billion mobile phone users in China in 2015, according to the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology statistics. This represents an average of 95.5 mobile phone per hundred people ‘€“ although less than 10% of phones are recycled annually.

No less than 560 million new phones were shipped to citizens across China last year. The huge influx of mobile devices is additional to the millions of handsets lying idle at home; more than 65% of consumers say they still own an old phone stored somewhere at home.

The average ‘sleeping’ period for end-of-life phones is estimated to be 2 years. The average lifetime of phones in big cities is around 12-18 months.

In 2015, in 3.7% of cases, consumers simply threw out their handhelds, while 7.1% of embraced the trade-in option. Reasons for not bringing it to take-back points include lack of clarity regarding the recycling fee or reward; not enough ‘reliable’ recycling centres; fear of data protection breaches.

In many cases, an old mobile phone that originally cost 3000 Yuan (US$ 435) may likely eventually be sold at a local shop for as little as US$ 10.