One of the areas in which the United Kingdom has made a focused effort to increase its recycling rates is with old mobile phones. A report that came out in 2009 revealed that the UK was way behind its European counterparts when it came to the recycling of small electronic devices. In fact, there are currently over ninety million unused phones sitting around in desks and drawers in the United Kingdom. Not only do small electronic devices like mobile phones take up valuable space in landfills, their batteries often leak harmful chemicals that can contaminate drinking water. This led to many new schemes being launched in the United Kingdom which were aimed at raising recycling rates for mobile phones, and the newest statistics show that it is working.
The Christmas holiday brought with it millions of new electronic devices in the form of gifts left under the tree. This makes the holidays the prime time for mobile phone recycling as people look for ways to gain a little money and get rid of phones they no longer use. Sellmymobile.com recently released a study which showed that Brits recycled more than five hundred thousand pounds worth of mobile phones in the two weeks following the Christmas holiday. Sellmymobile.com saw more than twenty thousand phones recycled over this two week period with an average value of just over twenty pounds.
The Nokia N95 was the most popular model turned in for recycling, which is not surprising considering it was one of the top selling phones in the world.
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