Mobile phone manufacturers like to boast that they are becoming greener and they point out that when their phones are recycled the plastics can be used in all sorts of useful ways, such as road cones. However, you don’t hear much about using recycled plastic in the manufacture of new mobiles. Why?
Greenpeace monitor the environmental performance of electronics manufacturers and they expect companies to use a minimum of 15% recycled plastic, with the aim of increasing this to 25%. This figure includes both pre and post consumer plastic. The former is plastic recycled by the factory and the latter is from consumers, for example recycled plastic bottles. Some companies look like they are doing well, but this may be distorted by a good figure for using pre-consumer plastic, while using no post-consumer plastic.
The reason why mobile phone manufacturers do not use more recycled plastic is that there are only limited opportunities to hide the recycled plastic inside the mobile. Apparently, recycled plastic has a different appearance from virgin plastic and manufacturers do not want to affect the cosmetic appearance of their handsets.
This could be a good time to do some market research to see whether environmentally-minded consumers would be prepared to accept a slightly different looking handset, or indeed other electronic products, if they were made from recycled plastic.