Mobile phone network providers and charities are beginning to feel the pinch in the increasingly cut-throat mobile phone recycling market. The recession is also a factor because more people are keeping their phones longer.
The expansion and increased competition in the market in the UK is very much commercially-driven and has moved away from the green ethos of diverting old handsets from landfill. The most popular business model entails mobile phone recyclers offering to buy back phones through websites at a price determined by the age and condition of the model. Whilst recyclers are usually prepared to buy virtually any phone, most handsets can invariably be reused straightaway or after refurbishment. According to Mazuma, one of the largest recyclers in the UK market, they actually recycle very few phones. Most are tested before being sent to the developing world for reuse. Users who sell their old phone as soon as they have upgraded receive the best prices because recent handsets have the greatest prospect of extended reuse. Mobile phone recyclers believe that giving people a financial incentive to trade in their handsets promptly, stops them losing value to the extent that they become almost valueless and highly likely to become e-waste.