Nokia recycling old phones
June 2nd, 2009Your non-functional mobile phone can take a form of a kitchen utensil, a park bench or a saxophone, just because of the leading mobile phone company, Nokia. Nokia has made a global campaign of recycling used devices into various utensils.
Recently in 2009, Nokia has successfully launched and initiated to control e-waste in four selected cities. A new Campaign “TakeBack” is going to be rolled out by Nokia on a national level.
In Tamil Nadu, a used phone recall programme is launched by Nokia that encourages mobile phone users to leave their phones made by any manufacturers that are discarded. Specially 60 bins are set to leave such phones at Nokia’s care centres and priority dealer.
Ambrish Bakaya, Director, Corporate Affairs, Nokia India, told The Hindu,” The campaign was conceived with the twin goals of educating the public on the hazards of e-waste while the sapling planting drive provided citizens a chance to give back to the environment”.
As Tamil Nadu head of the campaign has planted 12,500 fruit-bearing and avenue saplings in four villages in Kancheepuram – Kalakattur, Kooram, Maruthuvanpadi and Sankarapuram, due to Nokia volunteering to plant a sapling for each used phone it collects.
Nokia went national as about 3 tonnes of e-waste as thousands of eco-conscious citizens returned about 10,000 phones (including non-Nokia handsets), 12,000 batteries and 20,000 chargers was mobilized. Nokia has tied up with the Non-governmental Organisation ‘Ahimsa’ in the State and Rotary Mid Town in Bangalore for the sapling planting.
Nokia’s e-waste reduction campaign will cross an estimated figure of 5,000 collection points including 1,300 bins in India. Nokia had, since last year, been running an e-waste awareness campaign across the company’s network of 1,200 priority dealers and care centres in India, says Mr. Bakaya.
Only 16 per cent of the over all consumers think about recycling their phones in India. Moreover, only 17 per cent consumers are aware about that the phone could be recycled. 65-80 per cent of this Nokia’s devices are recyclable, as per Nokia’s estimate. 2.40 lakh tonnes of raw materials could be generated and reduction in greenhouse gases to the same effect as taking 4 million cars off the road can be done by just bringing one unused device to Nokia.
[Via: Infibeam]