Posted by Kellie on 14 February 2012
January is a bumper month for mobile phone recycling each year, with many of us turning in their old phones to recycling companies on account of receiving new phones as Christmas presents. Interestingly, according to figures from one key recycling outfit, the total value of recycled phones during January 2012 was nearly one-third higher than the same value a year earlier.
In all, this site saw more than 41,000 mobile phones submitted for recycling during the month. The phones had an average value of almost £60, but some phones were worth far more. In fact the ten most frequently recycled mobile phones were high-value items, averaging a value of more than £120 each, though some of the mobile phones routinely recycled are valued in the several hundred pounds range. Many of the top ten recycled phones were BlackBerry devices, including the BlackBerry Curve 8520, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 and the BlackBerry Torch 9800. The prevalence of these handsets at recycling outfits reflects their huge popularity with consumers, who of course had to buy them to begin with to have them to recycle.
Many of those recycling BlackBerry handsets had received a new BlackBerry mobile phone for Christmas, though some were no doubt switching to a phone that uses the also-popular Android OS.