Mobile Phone Recycling
Some countries are finding that there are a number of benefits from old mobile phone recycling. The Japanese government is one of these countries, as it is able to recover hundreds of pounds of gold, dozens of tonnes of copper, a large amounts of other precious metals including iridium. Previously the Japanese government had to import most of these precious metals.
Sadly it seems that less people want to recycle their old mobile phones than they used to. The government is currently trying to take action, to reverse this troubling trend. In the USA in 2003 over 11 million mobile phones were collected for recycling, however four years later this number had fallen to under 7 million.
There are a couple of factors which of course this drop in numbers. The first one is that many people are now keeping the old mobile phones, and using them as digital cameras once they have a new mobile phone. In addition a primary concern over the newer phones, if the level of personal data which they are able to store. The worry is that this data may fall into the wrong hands once the phones have been sent for recycling.
A campaign has been launched in order to raise the rate of mobile phone recycling from 20% to at least 30%. The campaign, which finishes on July the seventh has the lofty aim of raising awareness of mobile phone recycling schemes and the benefits that these bring.
In Japan the biggest mobile phone provider NTT DoCoMo has placed mobile phone recycling collection boxes in its own stores, and in conjunction with the Japanese internal affairs and Communications Ministry collection points have also been installed in a number of local convenience stores.
The suggestion has been made that one could technically smash your mobile phone with a mallet before you drop it in the collection box, and this will certainly degrade the amount of personally identifiable information that can be retrieved from it.