Smartphone technology paves the way for the market to adopt greener approaches. Encouraging greater use of mobile services helps to limit the need for multiple devices, extend the product lifecycle and offer consumers more ways of being green.

“Technology companies can never be green”. A casual comment dropped into conversation when discussing the idea of ‘green technology’. Of course, ‘green technology’ already exists in the form of multi-million pound, global scale projects that help reclaim water, produce renewable energy and generally help meet global climate change targets. Green technology, as it stands, does not mean the ‘greening’ of technology.

Despite the continuing efforts of manufacturers, it seems that we the consumer are still not recycling our old mobile phones.  Research by GfK NOP way back in 2007 first highlighted the problem of consumer lethargy but since then recent reports suggest there has been little improvement since.

An article by Telephony online for example, bemoans that:

“when a mobile phone reaches its end of life or, more likely, a consumer opts to upgrade, the three most common places for it to end up are a landfill, an incinerator or the consumer’s desk drawer.  Nokia’s own studies find that only about 3% of consumers are recycling their handsets today …there could be as many as one billion sitting in desks, consumers  aren’t spending the time or effort to seek out a recycling program.”