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Commenting on the pledge and the importance of recycling mobile phones in Australia, the Chair of the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) and director of Lead Technology and Products at Optus, Henry Calvert said, that “with more than 29 million mobile services in operation and over nine million new mobiles sold in Australia each year by our members, mobile phones are an intrinsic part of our lives at home and work. It is important that every old mobile phone that is replaced, and is no longer useful, doesn’t end up in landfill but is recycled in a safe, secure and ethical way.”
“This is our industry’s promise, but to do this we need Australians to promise they will recycle their unwanted mobiles by either dropping them off at a MobileMuster collection point or posting them in using a recycling satchel or reply paid label,” Calvert said.
Josh Delgado, Deputy Chair of the AMTA and director telecommunications division of Samsung said MobileMuster was established by the industry group “to provide a free, simple and accessible recycling service to consumers, which is fully funded by our members.
“No mobiles recycled with MobileMuster are sold for reuse, they are all recycled properly with the materials recovered being returned to make new products rather than being buried in the ground where they could potentially harm the environment. Even more importantly by reusing the recovered materials we are reducing our demand on the earth’s precious natural resources, saving energy and avoiding future greenhouse gas emissions,” Delgado concluded.
According to Delgado, since the mobile telecommunications industry introduced its recycling service in 1999, MobileMuster had collected 886 tonnes of mobile waste including over 6.34 million mobile phones and batteries which had been kept out of landfill.
