Nokia’s recent survey of 6,500 people in 13 countries has found that only 3% of people recycle their mobile phones. I can’t really tch tch about this as I have at least 4 in a box in my office drawer, dating back to 2000.

What makes it worse is that I *know* I can recycle these phones – I wrote a darned article on the topic :). I walk past a store once a month where I could just drop them in a bin.

According to Nokia’s survey, many people were just unaware that old phones can be recycled or how to do this. Argh, for shame Michael, for shame.

Right, now that the self flagellation is out of the way; an encouraging statistic is that very few of these phones wind up in landfill – only 4% – people just do what I do; stick them in a drawer. There’s literally a gold mine out there in phones – they contain precious metals including gold that can be reclaimed.

It seems that three billion people own cell phones and if we all brought back just one unused phone for recycling, that would save 240,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and in terms of greenhouse gas reduction, that’s equivalent as taking a staggering  4 million cars off the road.

Note to self: stop being such a hypocrite and get rid of the damned phones already! :)

Here’s my article on, ahem, cell phone recycling.