Brits cash in on old cell phones

The idea of recycling cell phones is emergent in the industry. So many cell phones are lying around, serving little or no purpose. Yes, some people keep one around as a backup, but plenty of people have two or three unused phones sitting in their houses, mainly because they don’t know what to do with them. Even if the phones are obsolete, they still seem valuable to their owners. So instead of tossing them in the trash — which is a horrible idea, anyway — they collect dust in drawers. It seems that the only way to get them out is to offer people an incentive, which is exactly what T-Mobile is doing in the UK.

The company, a subsidiary of Deutsch Telecom, recently conducted a survey in which they found that the total worth of unused mobile phones in the UK exceeds one billion pounds. We don’t even want to think of what that number is converted to the dollar. Regardless, it’s a sweet chunk of change to be sitting on.

Plenty can be done with these phones. They can be refurbished and sold to countries with lesser technology, or they can be broken down and used for parts. Either way, it’s an act of recycling. But T-Mobile knows that people aren’t going to just drop an old phone in a bag for no reason. They need incentive.

How about up to 80 pounds per phone? Is that something you would be interested in? We sure would be. Now, the average value of the ~52.3 million unused phones is 22.40 pounds, so not everyone is going to cash in big time. But still, if someone is going to give you money for your old, obsolete, unused phone, you might as well take it.

The money can either be sent to the user, or donated to a charity of his or her choice. Feeling bad about crunching your budget this year and not being able to donate as much as usual to charity? Well, here’s an excellent opportunity. Need a couple of bucks to take the kids to a ball game? If you have two or three phones, that could do it.

Note to US telecoms: if you implement a similar system, people will send in phones. We like money.

[Vnunet]

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