Recycling Old Cellphones

Mobile waste: Workers sort old mobile handsets, chargers and batteries collected as part of Nokia's `Take Back' campaign. These will be taken to Singapore for recycling. - Kamal Narang
Thomas K. Thomas

New Delhi, March 1

With most Indians changing their mobile handsets every 18 months, the need to find safe ways to dispose of old mobile phones has grown.

In a recently launched initiative, Nokia collected three tonnes of junk handsets, batteries, chargers and accessories from four cities during a 45-day campaign. The company now plans to expand this initiative across the country to create awareness about mobile waste.

“Most consumers do not know what to do with old handsets. We kept recycling bins across 1,300 locations from January 1 onwards and since then we have collected 60,000 items,” said Mr Ambrish Bakaya, Director, Corporate Affairs, Nokia India.

The collected junk will be taken to Singapore for recycling. Hundred per cent of the materials in the phones can be recovered and used to make new products.

Creating awareness

“We believe that there is no other way to deal with e-waste than to create awareness among consumers. We plan to now take this initiative to a pan-India level. We are also open to partnering other handset makers in this venture,” said Mr Bakaya.

Since this is a first of its kind initiative in India, there is no estimate of the amount of mobile junk in the country. The saving grace so far is that Indians generally don’t throw away phones but pass them on to low-end users or just keep it in the drawers of their desks.

Very few recycled

A consumer survey conducted by Nokia across 6,500 respondents in 13 countries, including India, highlights that despite the fact that people on average have each owned around five phones, very few of these are being recycled once they are no longer used.

Only three per cent said they had recycled their old phones and the majority, 44 per cent, said they were simply being kept at homes. Globally, half of those surveyed didn’t know phones could be recycled, with awareness lowest in India at 17 per cent compared to the UK at 80 per cent.

In other markets, operators such as Vodafone, Sprint and T Mobile have campaigns to take back used handsets under their corporate social responsibility schemes. “We would like to partner with Indian operators, the Government, NGOs and consumer groups to take this initiative forward this year,” said Mr Bakaya.

We Indians appreciate what NOKIA is doing to recycle waste.
However, why do the old cellphones have to go to Singapore for recycling?
Why can't it be done here in India.
NOKIA has collected 3 Tons of old mobiles in just 45 days.
They will collect many more tons in days to come.
Let us go by what they have already collected.
Assuming that each mobile weighs about 100 gms, it means that there would be about 30000 (Thirty thousand ) mobiles.
Assuming that the average price paid by the owner was Rs 3000.00, it means these mobiles were bought by the owners at a total cost of Rs 10 crores.
NOKIA, is collecting them free of cost by asking th people to deposit them in a basket at the mobile stores.
Singapore is very strict on industrial waste and would not allow NOKIA to import this waste unless they made money.
Assuming they make even 20% by cannibalising other sets, NOKIA will be making a neat 2 crores on these sets.
NOKIA is selling more than 1 million sets monthly in India if we are to go by the new connections issued by the telecom operators every month.
With such a lucrative market, why can't NOKIA opem a recycling centre in India.
All these Mobile operators are taking the Indians for granted because they know their leaders are corrupt and will sign along the dotted line if they give them money.
NOKIA should be made to start a recycling centre in India otherwise no NOKIA sets should be allowed to be imported in India.
This could later be turned into a manufacturing hub.

Radheshyam