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Monday, Jun 01, 2009
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Nokia to recycle used phones

M. Dinesh Varma

Global campaign to recycle used devices into various utilities

CHENNAI: Your dysfunctional mobile phone stashed away in the cupboard could gain afterlife as a kitchen utensil, a park bench or a saxophone, courtesy of Finnish mobile handset maker Nokia’s global campaign to recycle used devices into various utilities.

Following its successful pilot initiative to control e-waste that was launched in four select cities earlier this year, Nokia is preparing to roll out its “TakeBack” campaign on a national scale very soon. As part of the used phone recall programme in Tamil Nadu, Nokia will encourage mobile users to drop their discarded devices of any manufacturer into any of the 60 bins set up at its care centres and priority dealers.

With Nokia volunteering to plant a sapling for each used phone it collects, the Tamil Nadu leg of the campaign will feature the planting of an estimated 12,500 fruit-bearing and avenue tree saplings in four villages in Kancheepuram – Kalakattur, Kooram, Maruthuvanpadi and Sankarapuram. “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,” Ambrish Bakaya, Director, Corporate Affairs, Nokia India, told The Hindu.

According to Mr. Bakaya, Nokia was encouraged to go national after an enthusing pilot phase helped mobilise 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. For the sapling planting initiative, the handset maker has tied up with the Non-governmental Organisation ‘Ahimsa’ in the State and Rotary Mid Town in Bangalore. Nokia global e-waste mitigation strategy will play out across an estimated 5,000 collection points, which will include 1,300 bins in India. Mr. Bakaya said that 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.

In India, 84 per cent of consumers said that they don’t think about recycling their phones. Awareness that phones could be recycled was also the lowest in India (17 per cent). Nokia reckons that 65-80 per cent of any of its devices is recyclable. It is estimated that even if each of the three billion Nokia users in the world brought back just one unused device, it could generate 2.40 lakh tonnes of raw materials and reduce greenhouse gases to the same effect as taking 4 million cars off the road.

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