The Bear Minimum

There’s multiple ways you can recycle electronics, but either way you go, you should do it.

I’d been meaning to get down to the post office to drop a couple of old mobile phones off in the recycle bin there, but when I told the receptionist at my office where I was headed off to, she told me that you could actually sell your old mobile phones, though you only get a few pounds for them.

I looked up the website she directed me to, and found that they have a pretty good reason for purchasing people’s old phones, and I’m always very happy to help out a good cause so I started the process and ordered the envelope to be sent to me.

There’s quite a bit of stigma, I have discovered, about this process, as many people seem to feel that these companies mislead people selling their old phones, and they don’t get all that much for them. I have seen multiple references to this mobile phone xchange scam, and yet I have to wonder, if these people were willing to part with this phone, thinking they didn’t want it anymore, if they get anything for it, and don’t have to take a trip to their local post office to recycle the thing, then why would the become so aggravated at not getting a lot of money? I suppose the most obvious answer to that is that this site does seem to suggest they’ll give you a lot of money for certain phones, and of course those are the latest model phones that very few people would willing part with, and I think those larger figures on the front page of the site is someone misleading to some people.

I enjoy the thought of giving my phone to someone in a third-world country, though I do wonder how much it can really help third-world nations… I doubt they’ve got mobile phone towers dotted across the landscapes of most third-world nations, so perhaps that’s something that bares further investigation.