Vodafone’s One for One Program Will Bring Old Phones Back to Life

Our lust for shiny new gadgets has led to a mountain of electronic waste. Too many of our devices are difficult to recycle, and so much of our e-waste ends up in landfills, which can cause harm to the environment.

According to the Global E-waste Statistics Partnership, we produce more than 50 million tons of e-waste every year. We discard phones, monitors, and many other devices that could be refurbished and pressed back into use.

How can manufacturers be persuaded to take part? Tech manufacturers and local communities are connected by closing the loop. For every mobile phone sold to private customers, the telecommunications company will bring an old one back into circulation, according to the company's announcement.

There is money for old phones.

CTL buys end-of-life devices that are completely unusable or unrepairable and uses collection networks based mostly in Africa. Instead of ending up in a landfill, these devices are professionally recycled so that they can be used again.

Two years ago, CTL worked with T-Mobile and SAMSUNG on a similar scheme, but on a much smaller scale, for the GALAXY S10e in the Netherlands. This is the largest deal it has ever worked on. At least one million old cell phones will be recycled annually.

The director of CTL asked how to make electronic waste reduction commercially attractive. We want the commercial people to be interested in sustainable living.

According to De Kluijver, the path to better recycling is to build a business case that can drive formal collection and create demand for more e-waste to be collected. A pragmatic approach is what it is. The hope is that this program will benefit the company by increasing the number of customers they have.

There are an estimated 200 million old phones in Germany, which is why it's important to get them out of drawers and back into circulation. If you answer a few questions, your phone will be analyzed and you can get a trade-in price and free shipping.

What happens when you go around?

Some issues and potential greenwashing concerns are raised by this type of scheme. iFixit says recycling should be the last resort. What can be recovered from old phones is very limited. It is recommended that phones be refurbished frequently before they are recycled.

The iFixit team is concerned about the cost of transportation. CTL claims that the climate balance is positive and that it will support the construction of recycling infrastructures in developing countries. When the alternative is informal recycling or landfill, shipping e-waste to Europe is not as bad as it might seem.