In a recent survey conducted by Nokia in 13 countries in major markets including USA and Brazil covering the Americas , Finland , Germany , Italy , Russia , Sweden and UK covering the Europe , Nigeria covering the African continent , UAE covering the Middle East and India , Indonesia and China covering the Asian markets it was found that
- only 3 % of the phone users recycle their phone while
- 75 % don’t even think about what to do with the phone and
- 50 % don’t even know that their phone is recyclable
These are huge figures considering billions of phones served and on average a consumer changes the phone after every couple of years and in case of NokHeads like me minimum once a year .
Whatever the reason to change the phone , I again ask what we do with the old phones ? For me when I looked into my drawers I found a Nokia E70 , Nokia 6680 , Nokia 8910i and even a Nokia 3210 lying around and what happened to my previous 3330 , 7710 Matrix and 6230 even I don’t remember .
According to Markus Terho Director of Environmental Affairs , if each and everyone of just recycle one phone of ours we could save 240,000 Tonnes that’s nearly a Quarter Million Tonnes of raw materials and reduce green house gases equal to taking off 4 million cars off the road . Again these are huge number if each and everyone of us make a small sacrifice , we can achieve this target or in case of people like me with four scrap phones lying around could increase the numbers .
Coming to a Nokia phone ,no part of the phone when recycled goes to waste and upto 80 % of your Nokia phone is recyclable .
Nokia has setup 5,000 collections points across 85 countries of the world where consumers are offered different incentives to recycle their old phones , accessories and batteries . These campaigns include
In Malaysia Integrated Nokia Kiosks or INK as they are referred to are first of their kind combining recycling and phone servicing in one . The customer follows simple instructions on the onscreen and select options which generates a barcode which is stuck on the phone and dropped in the kiosk .
“The new kiosks are part of our commitment to environmental responsibility, and one way in which we believe we can make
As an added incentive Nokia will donate a tree for every phone recycled. Part of their already existing NEWtrees Initiative, a collaboration between Nokia, Equinox Publishing, and WWF Indonesia, in which Nokia pledged to plant 100,000 trees in Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. The aim is to help reduce the annual haze that affects the region, and contribute to protecting and preserving Sebangau and giving recyclers a sense of achievement as they can monitor the growth of their trees on Google Earth via coordinates of the tree planted provided by Nokia . Earlier a 20 % discount coupon was also issued to buy batteries or enhancements to recyclers.
Nokia’s past record in terms of recycling has been impressive
Since 1999 , Nokia has been recycling Equipment sold via networks with recycling possibilities included in commercial contracts.
In China the Green Box Initiative of 2006 in which 500 Nokia Care Points started to collect phones in collaboration with China Mobile which offered prepaid cards to recyclers . The initiative has collected over 80 tonnes of material and has been expanded to cover 11 Nokia suppliers in China
In Finland , Nokia distributed 200,000 return envelopes with the pledge to donate 2 Euros to WWF for every phone received for recycling . The campaign resulted in over 25,000 phones retuned for recycling and now has been expanded to 13 Different retail companied and 600 shops all over Finland .
In North America , ran campaigns involving employees and community to celebrate America Recycles Day on 15th
In Chile and Peru , with collaboration with Movistar a total of 3 Tonnes of material was collected.
In Philippines , a national pilot program is established to collect obsolete phones.
In Europe , Through WEEE collection schemes in 2007 , Nokia collected and managed over 17,000 Tonnes of electronic waste .
So what Nokia do with all these retuned phones ? do they refurbish it ?
No Nokia says they are not in the business of refurbishing as a refurbished phone cannot be guaranteed to provide the sale level of service as a new Nokia phone beside they want the third world countries to become a E-Waste bin where all refurbished phones are dumped due to their lower prices
So what does Nokia do with thousands of phones collected .
Simple they recycle it , On an average 80 % of the Nokia Phone can be recycled and Nokia has 80 specialized plants world wide to recycle the phones .
How they do it ?
As per Nokia’s recycling video , all phones are first taken one of the approved facilities where batterieis are removed from them as they are sent to a seperate recycler , Now the phones are put into a crusher which convert it into chips of plastic and metal which are then analyzed through sampling for their precious metal content and send out to specialist recyclers to claim the metals and plastics which are then used to make several everyday items from stadium benches to Saxophones .
A picture story of what happen in the plant is as follows
Batteries are being removed from the Phones
Batteries being removed
Batteries collected to be sent to specialized recycler
Phones on way to crushing
Phones and accessories to the crusher
On the conveyer belt for crushing
Meeting their Demise
Phones Crushed into chips
Her old phone now in form of Plastic and Metal chips
Analyzing the content of precious metals
Your Nokia contains , Gold , Platinum , Palladium & Copper
Analyzing Metals
Contents of a phone 
Till now I’ve talked about the environmental aspects that it will save around 240,000 tonnes of raw material if everyone recycles one phone .
Now let’s say in real world scenario only 10 % of the people recycle their phone or around 24,000 tonnes is saved ( Nokia is already colelcting close to this amount of E-Waste ) . What it will mean for Nokia Financially ?
In Nokia Captal Markets 2008 address , Nokia President CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, said "2009 will be challenging for our industry, however we have a strong, enviable base to build on and I believe we will continue to strengthen our position on many fronts. Building on our operational flexibility, Nokia is acting to reduce costs appropriately in the current slowing environment. At the same time, we remain fully committed to making the investments to build the future of our exciting industry and Nokia's continued competitiveness."
Nokia CFO, Rick Simonson, emphasized that appropriate cost reductions are being effected now and are continuing in plans for 2009 and 2010: "Nokia's highly variable, low fixed cost business model allows us to scale to a declining market. We are also acting on all fronts to reduce our costs beyond what may be attributable solely to the scalable aspects of the business model - moving to reduce cost of goods sold even further, reduce operational expenditure appropriately, and scale back capital expenditure. We expect these strong actions to offset, in part, the negative impact of slowing sales."
So Nokia is working on cost cuttings and what better way to acquire Raw materials for free then to encourage people to return their cell phones for minimum of benefits while Nokia gets access to a huge raw material resource for cheap .
Be it financial reasons behind it or purely environmental or a mix of both , I’m with Nokia and agree with their recycling initiatives.
Farhan
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