Recycle your old Mobile Phone or Cell Phone for Cash

Why should I recycle my old cell phone or mobile phone?

Mobile phones or cell phones need to be disposed of responsibly. They contain toxic metals and chemicals like lead (Pb), mercury (Hg), cadmium (Cd) and arsenic (As) which, if end up in a landfill, can damage the environment by polluting the soil and water supplies.

Most of these metals, can be recycled. Which uses less energy than mining new material, refining and turning it into new products.

What happens to old cell phones or mobile phones?

Many people with mobile or cell phone contracts get a new phone every year, 18 months or 2 years, depending on the contract.

Some of these old phones end up on eBay or other auction websites, where you can usually pick up a great deal on a previous years model phone! Others become hand-me-downs to family members or friends.

But surprisingly, the majority of the rest of these old mobile cell phones are sitting in a draw or in the back of your closet or cupboard, just gathering dust. Probably because we just don't know what to do with them. Why not turn them into cash?

What should we do with our old cell phones or mobile phones?

There a are a number of options:

• Some recycling collection centres have a mobile phone and cell phone bins, which then get taken as a large batch to a mobile phone or cell phone recycling facility.
• Donate to charity and then the charity will get them re-used or recycled - sell them as a second hand product or sell them to a recycling company to be stripped down - making the charity some cash.
• Some high street stores, supermarkets as well as cell phone stores and mobile phone shops have a recycling collection point.
• Companies which specialise in collecting old mobile phone and cell phones are appearing online and locally - some of these companies will even pay you to safely dispose of your phone, some will send you a pre-paid envelope for you to post it to them. Then they can sell large quantities of our old phones to specialist recycling facilities, where they are stripped down into their base components, sold on and recycled. Some parts could even be turned into brand new mobile phones and cell phones!

Many of these companies often also collect old pagers, PDAs, iPods and other MP3 players that have built-in batteries, laptops, spare batteries and their chargers etc. So these other items can be recycled too. Why not donate them to charity or make yourself some cash?