Orange has commissioned a study to promote itsrecyclingscheme, and it found that a whopping £2.7bn worth of mobile phones are lying unused in people’s homes across the UK.
The report in today’sTelegraphalso noted that almost a third of consumers were unaware that they could make money by selling their unused gadgets. It’s not clear how big a user-base was used in this study, but I’m not entirely confident of that statistic, and I posit that most people simply never get ’round to selling their old devices.
Orange claims that its money-back offers on handsets average £45 and can rise to £252 for top-end models. It seems that such trade-in schemes are all the rage, and we’ve reported on a number of similar schemes over the past few weeks, with both UK mobile networkThreeandAsdalaunching their own gadget recycling initiatives.
Such schemes are good for consumers looking for a quick, hassle-free way of cashing in on their old devices. But typically, you get quite a bit below the market value for your old gadgets, which is where private avenues such as eBay and Gumtree come into play. But given that so many unused mobile phones are sitting around in cupboards, any initiative to encourage consumers to recycle has to be a good thing.
Story byPaul Sawers
Paul Sawers was a reporter with The Next Web in various roles from May 2011 to November 2014.
Follow Paul on Twitter: @psawers or check h(show all)Paul Sawers was a reporter with The Next Web in various roles from May 2011 to November 2014.
Follow Paul on Twitter:@psawersor check him out onGoogle+.
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