Guess how many mobile phones are currently in use around the world? Around five billion http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10569081. Yep, that’s a lot of phones. But now guess how many have been sold since 1994? Around ten billion. That means five billion phones are sitting around gathering dust. Of these, Mobile Muster, an industry body that encourages recycling, estimates around 18 million are sitting in drawers in Australia!

Given the enormous environmental benefits of recycling, its time we got them out of our drawers and off to the recyclers. This especially applies to the 30% of us who have 2 or more phones we don’t use hanging around! As Turlough Guerin, Telstra’s environment chief argues in his blog http://exchange.telstra.com.au/2010/12/09/mining-for-old-phones this week, the multiplier benefit is dramatic. Every ton of mobile phone circuit boards saves hundreds of tonnes of ore from being mined. But it’s not just the metals. Mobile Muster says that over 90% of an old phone can be recycled into new products and materials, all while creating jobs and reducing environmental impact.

With another 1.2 billion phones sold last year, we better get good at this real fast or we’ll be drowning in the things! If you want to understand the issue more deeply, you can go to the Total Environment Centre website http://www.tec.org.au/product-take-back who specialise in this area.

With all the complex challenges in the environment, this one is easy to take action on now, and it’s free. You can get a mail in satchel from a post office, get a mailing label on line to stick on yourself or take your phone into a drop off centre. All the details are available at the Mobile Muster website http://www.mobilemuster.com.au.

So act today – get that phone out of your drawer and send it away!

@droga5 [+]December 14th, 2010, 13:38