ShP (second hand phones) was formed in 2002 by Simon Walsh and Craig Smith. They started the company in a garage in Wimbledon and are now one of the UK’s leading electronic recycling companies both online and offline. The company started with purely business-to-business handset recycling and now offers a mobile phone recycling service to many different groups such as phone networks and government bodies, through to the general public in the UK, Europe and now the Middle East.
The slogan on their website is “We help the Environment One Mobile At A Time” and as companies and individuals seek to reduce their carbon footprint, they continue to expand by tapping into this ever expanding green market.
They work through various brands including mopay.co.uk – the original and first online consumer mobile phone recycling site which launched in April 2005. To date mopay’s site has recycled over 500,000 phones, worth millions of pounds.
In their first year ShP turned over £30,000 and employed two people. By 2009 they turned over just under £9m, and employed approximately 75 people, recently being named as one of the ‘top 100 companies to work for’ by the Sunday Times.
ShP recycle around 60,000 phones per month and now also recycle other small electronic items like digital cameras, laptops and sat navs.
Old phones are refurbished where possible, stripped of their data and sold to developing countries for re-use. Where they can’t be reused, the parts are broken down and recycled.