FONEBAK TAKES BACK MOBILE PHONES

U.K. - based telecommunications disposal business Shields Environmental has lauched 'Fonebak' - a national scheme to take back and re-use or recycle the estimated 15 million mobile phones replaced each year in Britain. According to the company, Foneback is the world's first mobile phone recycling scheme. Shields Environmental claims to have the backing of all the network service providers and four major retail chains in the U.K. Furthermore, Foneback is said to be the first scheme that fully conforms to the requirements of the EU,s draft directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment. The Fonebak scheme will focus on recorditioning and reselling handsets wherever possible because this has an economic payback several times greater than that of simply recycling phone components, says the company. Shields Environmental expects to re-use around 70% of the mobile phones. In the 12 months to the end of August 2002, already over 1 million phones were reused in the U.K. and over 105 tonnes of handsets, betteries and accessories were processed for materials recycling. This equates to the diversion from landfill of over 250 tonnes.