Yes really, your old phone is worth gold! That "old refrigerator" of yours contains even more gold than gold ore. Yet we often throw our old phone in the back of a drawer without thinking about it (because: handy, isn't it, such a spare phone?). Only to find out a few years later that it is still there. And it might still end up in the trash. A shame, we think at Nowa. 

Worldwide, at least eighty percent of the annual mountain of e-waste ends up in landfills. Not only a shame, but also very bad for the environment. And that while it is only a small effort to hand in your phone.

Old phone? This is what you can do with it:

To give away

A telephone that still works is best given away to friends or family or sold to a private individual in the Netherlands. There are telephone companies that sell handed-in devices in Africa, for example, and in return take back a broken telephone that is recycled in an environmentally friendly way in Europe. 

Have it repaired

Your old phone is really not immediately waste when something is broken. In many cases you can simply have your phone repaired. For smartphones, repairing is better for the environment than replacing. The production of new smartphones costs much more energy than the use. In addition, new rare materials are constantly needed to meet the high demand for telephones worldwide. The extraction of these materials is often very bad for people and the environment. So think twice before you immediately buy a new one.

Let's recycle

Is your old phone beyond repair? Then don't throw it in the rubbish bin, but hand in your broken phone at a collection point or the recycling center. Many raw materials (such as the silver and gold from which we make our jewellery) can be reused. Check on Waste-Disclosure Guide.nl where you can hand in your old phone.

What happens to your old phone?

When you have handed in your phone at a collection point, the parts that can still be used are removed. Think of a camera, speaker or battery. They can still be used for another device. Then the phone goes through a kind of pulverizer. Magnets pull the metal parts from the parts flow on the conveyor belt. These are mainly in the battery, circuit board and SIM card (if it is still present). All plastic and rubber are also filtered out. The pieces of metal and plastic are then melted down at high temperatures into new materials. New products can then be made from this.

So don't let your devices gather dust in a drawer. Your old phone is worth money! read here how.