E-waste and mobile phones have become a major environmental problem. Rapid advances in technology and style mean that people are constantly exchanging their mobile phones and MP3 devices for the latest and greatest trend. Most people in the UK change out their phones every eighteen to twenty four months which led to an estimated ninety million mobile phones lying around unused in the UK alone. There have been schemes launched all over Asia and Europe, some of which offer incentives for customers to recycle phones, such as vouchers or cash for old handsets, while others try to increase recycling by attaching the act to a charity so that customers feel that their efforts are going towards a worthy cause. Recently Nokia announced that its Asian branches were doing a much better job at recycling than their European counterparts, and they also gave some potential reasons for this.
The rates of recovery for raw materials have been higher in Nokia’s Asian branches than it has been in its European stores. Nokia says that the reason this occurs is because Asian labor is much cheaper, which allows Nokia to employ people to separate the materials before they go to the recycling centre. In Europe there is about an eighty to eighty five percent yield on raw materials but in Asia that rate is close to one hundred percent due to the fact that the materials are separated first. This is why many recycling companies end up shipping products to other nations to be recycled. The cheap labor makes it much more cost effective.
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