There are a number of companies that have appeared in the last couple of years who will buy your old mobile phones for cash. With regular upgrades offered by many of the mobile service providers and new models coming on the market almost daily, the number of mobile phones left neglected in boxes and drawers around our houses is estimated to be somewhere in the region of 50 million. If these phones lose £5 of their value a month, that’s £2.5 billion lost to the UK economy.

Firms such as Envirophone and Mazuma specialise in recycling and reusing old mobile phones, and will buy old phones for cash if they think they can sell them on. Even if your phone isn’t actually worth anything, be it broken or simply too old to have any value, recycling services are often offered free of charge. Using their services is straightforward and the whole process can take as little as a week and all postage costs are covered, you won’t even have to pay for packaging.

A far better option than simply throwing a broken phone out, recycling can reclaim up to 80% of the materials in a mobile phone and process them for reuse. This not only reduces the demand on the Earth’s finite natural resources, but also prevents the many harmful materials used in the components of mobile phones from escaping into the environment. Reused and reconditioned phones are sold on in the developing world, especially to markets in Africa and South America.