You might have noticed the recent blanket coverage of mobile phone recycling companies such as MazumaMobile and Envirofone on TV recently (well, you might if you’re UK-based, anyway!). These ads are on nearly 24/7, encouraging you to part with your mobile phone in exchange for some juicy cash.

Just how much do you get for your old phones, though, and what happens when you send them off?

How much can you get for recycling your mobile phone?

Ah, the million dollar question. Well, the £200 question, anyway, as that’s the amount you can earn from selling your old mobile.

Now, before you rush to send in your old Motorola StarTac, £200 is for a Nokia N96, which will currently set you back £439 unlocked (which is what it’ll have to be, unless you want to keep on paying your monthly tariff). Still, that’s nearly 50% of the phone’s value, which really isn’t bad at all. Just try selling the same phone to your local second hand store and see how much they offer you!

Even lesser models will give you some good deals. An old Nokia 95, for example, will still give you £100, while even a really old Samsung U600 will give you £25. Given that most of these phones have been sold for free with a minimal tariff, and their contract has long since expired, that’s an excellent deal.

Which mobile phone recycling company is best?

There are three big UK mobile phone recycling companies:

• MazumaMobile – the most heavily advertised, offering either cash or Argos voucher worth an extra 10%
• Envirofone – most environmentally focused, offering pennies less than MazumaMobile (e.g. £99.98 vs £100 for a Noia N95)
• FoneBank – offers the best deals, but typically only 1% more than the others

So which one you choose is down to whichever web site you prefer – there really is very little to choose between them.

What do they do with the mobile phones?

One question I always wanted to know is what do these mobile phone recycling companies actually do with the phones that are sent in? Having done a bit research, it seems that some are resold in countries across Africa and Asia, while others that are beyond repair are scavenged for their still-working parts (memory cards, Flash memory, chips, etc.). The ones that are literally old fashioned-looking bricks and beyond even salvage are melted down to extract the valuable metals contained within.

The batteries in particular are a rich source of such metals. For example, Battery recycling specialists BatteryBack and WasteCare safely dispose of the battery and recover from it its Zinc, Carbon and Manganese Oxide components, which are then reused in other batteries. All marvelously green!

What do the recyclers get out of it?

So just what do these companies get from recycling your phones? The answer’s simple – cash, and plenty of it! The whole mobile phone recycling sector is currently booming. Companies such as MazumaMobile make money from each mobile phone you send in (naturally), and according to a report by HitWise, searches for the phrase “recycle mobile phones” shot up by a whopping 189% between May 2008 and May 2009.

As the credit crunch bites, more and more people looking for painless ways to earn extra cash, and mobile phone recycling offers just that.

Ironically, though, it turns out that although the searches for mobile phone recycling have shot up, searches for other forms of recycling have plummeted! It seems that people are happy to recycle mobile phones because someone’s happy to pay for them, whereas goods that would normally have been recycled for free are being kept for longer. If it wasn’t for the inherent value contained with a phone’s components, they too would be kept for longer, causing the mobile phone companies even more pain than they’re currently suffering.

But they are valuable, and the mobile phone recycling companies are booming. With an estimated 25 million unused phones in the UK alone, the mobile phone recycling business is here to stay. Good news for phone owners, as the deals they’re offering are good, and if nothing else, will help offset the cost of your next shiny new phone.

[Sources: Battery Back, WasteCare]