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Nokia has collected 3 tonnes mobile waste within 45 days. With most Indians changing their mobile handsets every 18 months, the need to find safe ways to dispose of old mobile phones has grown.

In a recently launched initiative, Nokia collected three tonnes of junk handsets, batteries, chargers and accessories from four cities during a 45-day campaign. The company now plans to expand this initiative across the country to create awareness about mobile waste.

Most consumers do not know what to do with old handsets. We kept recycling bins across 1,300 locations from January 1 onwards and since then we have collected 60,000 items, said Mr Ambrish Bakaya, Director, Corporate Affairs, Nokia India.

The collected junk will be taken to Singapore for recycling. Hundred per cent of the materials in the phones can be recovered and used to make new products.
Creating awareness

According to Mr. Bakaya, there is no other way to deal with e-waste than to create awareness among consumers. We plan to now take this initiative to a pan-India level. We are also open to partnering other handset makers in this venture.

Since this is a first of its kind initiative in India, there is no estimate of the amount of mobile junk in the country. The saving grace so far is that Indians generally don’t throw away phones but pass them on to low-end users or just keep it in the drawers of their desks.

Very few recycled

A consumer survey conducted by Nokia across 6,500 respondents in 13 countries, including India, highlights that despite the fact that people on average have each owned around five phones, very few of these are being recycled once they are no longer used.

Only three per cent said they had recycled their old phones and the majority, 44 per cent, said they were simply being kept at homes. Globally, half of those surveyed didn’t know phones could be recycled, with awareness lowest in India at 17 per cent compared to the UK at 80 per cent.

In other markets, operators such as Vodafone, Sprint and T Mobile have campaigns to take back used handsets under their corporate social responsibility schemes. Nokia would like to partner with Indian operators, the Government, NGOs and consumer groups to take this initiative forward this year, said Mr Bakaya.