68 million old phones left lying around

Two thirds of the UK have one in a drawer

13 April 2010 0:01 GMT / By Duncan Geere

It seems that Brits are a wasteful sort. A survey of 1,332 UK residents, conducted by SellMyMobile.com, has found that nearly two thirds of the population have at least one old mobile just lying around unusued, and about a fifth admitted to having three or more.

Extrapolating that figure up to the whole population suggests that there are 68 million handsets lying in drawers, on shelves, or down the back of sofas. That's more than one per person in the country. The site's average price for a recycled handset is £25, which scales up to a whopping £1.7 billion's worth of electronics gathering dust.

Of course, there's no guarantee that you'll get £25 for the handset - particularly if it's been lying around for a while. You might want to make sure it's wiped too, before selling to a recycling site. While many offer guarantees to factory reset them, recycled handsets usually get sent to the third world and you might not be too happy about someone else getting hold of your contact book.

Full tags

Phones, Mobile phones, Statistics, Recycling