Mobile phones swarm across Australia

Australia – There are 23 million phones eligible for recycling in Australia at present, says a new report from non-profit recycler MobileMuster. This equals a mobile phone for ‘every man, woman and child’ in the nation, and the number is still on the increase – especially with Christmas around the corner.

‘There are now 30 million mobile phone service subscriptions in Australia and anywhere between 130 000 to 190 000 new mobile phones being imported on average into the country each week,’ states MobileMuster’s recycling manager Rose Read.

‘When you look at the environmental impact of mobile phone recycling in Australia in the last 15 years, it is the equivalent of planting nearly 50 000 trees, taking 2300 cars off the road and avoiding over 8000 tonnes in CO2 greenhouse gases,’ she adds.

The study indicates that Australians are ‘more aware than ever’ of mobile phone recycling but are holding on to their devices for a range of reasons, including: they want to keep a spare as a back-up; it still functions and has information on it; and they are planning to recycle it but have not yet done so. ‘The challenge we put to all Australians: to dig into their drawers, pull out their old phones and accessories, and recycle them with MobileMuster,’ says Read.

The programme is supported by Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and several other big brands and now includes 4000 drop-off points. At these sites, a total of 1014 tonnes of old mobile phone components have been recycled, thus obviating the need to mine 25 270 tonnes of precious metal ore, the recycler states.

For more information, visit: www.mobilemuster.com.au