Did you know that 55 million unused smartphones gather dust in drawers and cupboards across the UK? It’s true. We're on the road to becoming the most significant contributor to levels of e-waste over the next three years, and that's a problem. Especially when many handsets end up in landfills, pushing toxic electronic waste into the soil and carbon emissions into our atmosphere.

But there's a solution. Moving the dial from discarding gadgets to upcycling them can help bring positive change to the planet. This page highlights our electronic waste problem and the benefits of upcycling unused devices.

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Why is it important to upcycle?

Upcycling is reusing unwanted objects or devices instead of throwing them away. But why upcycle your old phone, laptop or tablet?

• The UN reports the planet is filled with 50 million tonnes of electrical waste every year. That's the equivalent of over 250 billion new iPhone 12s!
• Only 20% of e-waste is appropriately recycled. The rest is left to contaminate our soil and atmosphere.
• Electronics often contain raw materials like gold, platinum, cobalt, and lithium. In most cases, these are lost forever in landfills.
• 80% of a smartphone's carbon footprint is produced during manufacturing. By upcycling, you're removing the bulk of your phone's carbon footprint in one go.

What are the benefits of trading?

Trading your old phone or tablet means an extra bit of cash in your pocket. To give you an example, you could receive up to £460 when you trade in an iPhone 16.

• Upcycling and trading in your tech prevent phones from going to landfill. At Envirofone, we wipe, clean and refurbish devices so they can be used again and again.
• Refurbished devices are a great alternative to buying brand new, especially if you’re looking to save a bit of cash or buying a phone for teenagers or students.
• Upcycling tech for new purposes or trading it in so it can be refurbished means slowing down the demand for new phones and releases.

What are the advantages of recycling batteries?

Upcycling phones and tech reduces the number of toxic materials dumped in landfills. Cobalt, nickel, manganese, and other metals in smartphone batteries can easily leak from buried battery casings and contaminate soil and groundwater, endangering ecosystems and human health. Lithium-ion battery recycling reduces energy consumption and CO2 emissions, saves natural resources, avoids virgin material mining and imports, reduces environmental toxicity, creates an economic gain, reduces waste, and makes safety issues manageable.

The majority of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where over 40,000 children are exploited in the mining process, classifying cobalt from the DRC as a "conflict resource."

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Conclusion:

Ahead of National Upcycling Day, at Envirofone we're calling on you to upcycle your used devices with us. We reuse every product we receive—in most cases, they're sold as refurbished tech through our dedicated site. And if we can't sell your tech or it's beyond repair, we’ll send it to one of our e-waste recycling plants. Our plants use technology to recover raw materials like lithium and cobalt, reducing CO2 emissions, conserving natural resources, and decreasing waste.