Nokia reminds remaining 97% of mobile phone users to recycle old units

Before you go off to purchase that new N78, Nokia N96, or even the iPhone, have you already sat down and thought about what you'll do with the phone that you'll replace? Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. What's clear is that even if you did sit down to think about it, chances are, recycling it never occurred to you.

That's because according to the results of a global consumer survey conducted by Nokia with 6,500 people in 13 countries including Finland, Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden, UK, United Arab Emirates, USA, Nigeria, India, China, Indonesia and Brazil, only 3% of people recycle their old mobile phones, even though they have no more use for it.

The survey finds that people either never even thought of recycling, or thought of it but just didn't know how to go about it.

At first, it might not seem like such a big deal, but if you consider the fact that the estimated number of mobile phone users in the world is 3 billion, up to 240,000 tonnes of raw materials could be saved, not to mention the dramatic reduction of greenhouse gases.

This is very alarming news, and goes to show that people may not be so faithful, if not alien to the thought of saving the environment through recycling. But let's face it, recycling, per se, means giving up old stuff for the dumps so they can be turned into something new and usable again. However that means that you'd have to give up a joyous piece of tech that you maybe bought a few years ago for more than half a grand. It's not unlikely that people would rather keep their old mobile phones in dark, dusty drawers where they can always see it and say, "I bought that for $500," than bring it to a recycling plant and have a chance to save the world.

Anyway, since it's never too late to chance, you can still gather up all those unused mobile phones lying around in your home to be turned over in places like Nokia's collection points. You can start by checking out http://www.nokia.com/werecyle or communicate with the people in your community for a more focused effort.

Via Nokia