article-header

Reuse and Recycling

Your old phone is calling – it wants a new life

Reuse and Recycling

Many of us, (around 400 million, by the third quarter of 2017) have a brand new phone that we’re getting to know, and an old phone, our constant companion for the last 1.7 years, who’s about to disappear into the messy drawer we all have. You know what we mean – that drawer where the things we can’t quite get rid of go. Maybe we don’t really trust our new phone yet – we’ll hold onto the old one as a fail-safe. Maybe we haven’t figured out how to get those old photos off the phone – especially that one where you’re dancing with the coat-rack at the office party. Maybe we have an inkling that this piece of hardware doesn’t belong in the trash, but we don’t know what to do with it.

The Earth has a messy drawer problem

All of these reasons mean that the planet’s big messy drawer has around 1.6 billion phones languishing in it. But what if those mild-mannered phones have superhero lives ahead of them? What if they could prevent millions of kilos of CO2 from entering our atmosphere? Or change the life of a small business owner in Ghana? Or even make a brand new phone a little bit fairer?

 

Join the Fairphone recycling program! By recycling and reusing old phones, we can give them new lives in new homes, or recover valuable materials like gold, copper and palladium. We can reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing new phones, AND make the environment inside our messy drawers a bit cleaner, freeing up some much-needed space for 1980s floppy disks, random lengths of string, and loose paper clips.

Compared to the good it can do, the reasons for keeping old phones in the drawer start to pale into insignificance. That backup? Let’s face it, at best you only need your last phone. And even then, maybe only one person in the house needs one (after all, sharing is caring!).

But what about my old data?

Want to ensure your embarrassing party pictures are gone? We’ve put together a step by step guide to securely overwrite your data on your old phone – whether it’s an iPhone or an Android or a Blackberry. And if that’s not enough, don’t worry, we erase data again using Blancco Technology.

Still have data on that old phone you need to migrate? Drop in to our community forum and ask for help or share your tips!

Get your free shipping label now

Our recycling program is currently available in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

If you live in one of those countries, go grab your old phone(s) and fill out this super easy form — we’ll send you a free shipping label to whisk your phone off to its new life.

 
Reuse and recycling starts with you. Dig out those phones and start recycling!

We promise we’ll take good care of your old friend: after all, every phone you recycle is another step towards a brighter, fairer future for all of us.

Do you hear that sound? It’s your old phone calling you to send it on a new adventure. We’ll let you go answer it now.

Share this post

Related posts See all posts

  • We’re stopping Fairphone Easy… for now.

    We’re stopping Fairphone Easy… for now.

    It is with a heavy heart that we have taken the not-so-easy decision to discontinue Fairphone Easy… at the moment, at least.  Fairphone Easy’s phone-as-a-service subscription model reaffirmed our commitment to a circular economy. When we launched the program in the Netherlands in 2022, the idea was that it would provide a more sustainable alternative...

    Read more
  • What does e-waste neutral mean?

    What does e-waste neutral mean?

    For some reason, people love hoarding old electronics. Having worked in the industry for four years and coordinated Fairphone’s circularity efforts since 2020, the amount of friends and colleagues who confirm they have a stash of old phones, cables, and MP3 players hidden away in some drawer baffles me. Here in Europe, we separate our...

    Read more

Fairphone Newsletter

Want to stay in the loop with all things Fairphone?

Suscríbete a nuestro newsletter para enviarte noticias sobre nuestros proyectos

Suscríbete a nuestra newsletter y recibe 5€ de descuento en tu próximo pedido.

Enviaremos el €5 de descuento al correo electrónico que haz especificado en el momento del registro. El código de descuento puede ser utilizado en tu próxima compra superior a 75€. Por favor ten en cuenta que nuestro principal idioma de comunicación es el Inglés. Al suscribirte, aceptas que la información que nos envías será procesada de acuerdo a nuestra Política de Privacidad y Términos de uso.Te pedimos tu nombre y dirección de correo electrónico para enviarte nuestro newsletter con noticias sobre nuestros proyectos, puedes darte de baja en cualquier momento si así lo deseas.

Close