Sell Old Mobile Phone Handsets for Cash and Recycling

Selling and old mobile phones through the Internet has become an easy thing to do over recent years. Specialist mobile phone recycling companies will buy old handsets from anyone then recycle them in an eco-friendly way. Mobile phone waste is fuelling the growth of recycling for cash services because each handset contains valuable parts.

An estimated 85% or 40 million people in the UK have at least one mobile phone. This is a huge amount of handsets, approximately 62.5 million, and there are questions about what people do with their phones after they stop using them. The story behind how a phones life ends can vary greatly.

The user may have been using the same phone for many years because it has been reliable for them an all they needed but then it suddenly broke. At the other end of the spectrum are obsessive gadget enthusiasts who always want the latest models and may have a new handset every year or even every six months. Perhaps the most common type of user is someone with a mobile phone contract who will get a new handset every 12, 18 or 24 months and get to keep the old one.

Right across the board of mobile users we see that everyone eventually will need a new phone. The cost of repair, not only in money but in environment costs, outweighs the cost of acquiring a new phone. Handsets with minor faults such as a cracked screen can be fixed but usually it is still a cost, with or without insurance. Old handsets that have been replaced by new ones will one of the following paths:

• Sold to friends, family or contacts
  
  
• Sold on an online auction website
  
  
• Given away or donated
  
  
• Left in a drawer, box or hidden away
  
  
• Kept as a spare
  
  
• Thrown in the bin
  
  
• Recycled

In this list of possible outcomes some are putting the phone to good use by selling it on or giving it away knowing it will be reused. Others will keep a phone as a spare and leave in a drawer which then tend to be forgotten about after a few months which simply means the phone is losing value when it could be recycled or sold on. The worst possible outcome for a phone is for it to be thrown away in the bin, sent out with the trash or thrown in the tip. Even if a phone is broken doing this contributes to the landfill problem and a handset will not break down for hundreds of years and is a waste of the phones spare parts. One of the best outcomes for an old handset is for it to be recycled. If a phone is in good enough condition it can be re-conditioned and sold on to the developing world making great use of all the components by re-using them. If the phone is not fit to be re-used or is in a bad condition it will be broken down into its component parts and recycled accordingly. As all mobile phones contain small amounts of gold and other precious earth elements they can be recovered, smelted and reused.