DUBLIN, Ireland-As mobile phone technology continues to develop rapidly, users continually are encouraged by operators and manufacturers to upgrade their phones to the latest models to take advantage of advanced network services. This, however, leaves the question of what should be done with old handsets.
Many European cellular phone customers are on their second or third handset, and with 40-percent market penetration in some countries, this will add up to potentially millions of phones falling out of use over the next few years. When the absence to date of specific legislation on recycling is taken into account, the scale of the problem becomes even clearer.
Several phone manufacturers, including Alcatel, L.M. Ericsson, Motorola Inc., Nokia, Panasonic and Philips Electronics N.V. made the first move toward addressing this problem last year by forming a “takeback” working group under the aegis of ECTEL, the European trade organization for the Telecommunications and Professional Electronics Industry. Takeback is a generic term for the management of products at the end of their working life.
Pilot projects have been running in the United Kingdom and Sweden for the last 18 months, confirmed Bill McCartney of Motorola, who is the current chairman of ECTEL. He admits that the key to the success of the initiative will be the response from mobile phone users and retailers.
While manufacturers generally have been supportive, the next step is to get the backing of the operators.
Once these operators come on board, the pilot program can become a fully operational scheme. This also will give the scheme a promotional boost and open up the possibility of sending information directly to customers; ECTEL has not had the resources to fund expensive advertising campaigns.
McCartney emphasizes that the motivation for the scheme came from a sense of industry responsibility rather than an intention to make money. However, he also acknowledges that the industry identified the prospect of legislation at European Union (EU) level sometime in the near future, and there was a feeling that the industry would benefit from taking the initiative rather than waiting for governments to act.
Relevant legislation dealing with responsibility for end-of-life electrical and electronic products is at the first draft stage and is expected to be finalized by the European Union by this November.
The main objective of the legislation is “as a first priority, the prevention of waste from end-of-life electrical and electronic equipment and, in addition, the reuse, recycling and recovery to reduce the quantity of waste destined for final disposal,”according to an EU policy document.
ECTEL has not set any targets for the number of phones it hopes to recycle.
“The EU has said that it would like to see between 40 (percent) and 60 percent of all phones taken back, and this is a realistic future target if the public support our scheme,” said McCartney, who believes that support at government level also will be crucial to its success.
Another development that would boost the takeback program would be a decision by manufacturers to make their phones easier to recycle by using fewer different plastics in handsets.
As many as 20 different plastics can be used in making a single handset, and ECTEL promotes reducing this figure significantly, which would in turn reduce the amount of separation required in the recycling process and thus lower the recycling cost. No manufacturer, however, has yet made a concrete commitment to reduce the number of plastics used in its phones.
“The industry has responded favorably to the concept of takeback based on our research,” said Alcatel’s U.K. technical manager, David McHugh, who also pointed to the short lifespan of the average mobile phone.
“Many users will upgrade their phone long before the useful life of the handset is expired,” said McHugh. “We can make phones last longer, but with the network contract situation people frequently want to change them after a year even though they don’t necessarily want to throw away a perfectly good handset.”
Contact: Bill McCartney, ECTEL chairman
Tel: (+44) 1753-553225
