Calling customers to recycle

Our approach …

According to a survey conducted last year there are approximately 53 million unused mobile phone handsets in the UK, many of which will end up in the rubbish bin.

Simply sending our mobile phones to landfill means the chemicals inside them often leak into the surrounding land and water, polluting the environment. It also means that the precious materials within the phones can’t be recycled.

Because we are always looking for ways to help our customers act on the issues important to them, we have offered free mobile phone recycling across all of our stores since the beginning of 2007.

The service is the result of a partnership between ASDA and Greener Solutions: a company dedicated to helping reuse and recycle mobile phones, to the benefit of over 150 charities across Europe.

Greener Solutions provides envelopes which our customers and colleagues can use to send their unwanted handsets to the company, free of charge.

‘Recycling your old phone has many benefits, not least of which is preventing it from being put into landfill, where the batteries may leak harmful toxins into the earth’ explains Peter Friend, Greener Solution’s Business Development Manager.

‘When phones are received by Greener Solutions they are sorted into two streams: recycle and reuse. Recycled phones are refined for their parts which can be re–used, and the batteries are disposed of in an environmentally friendly way. We also give 50p to ASDA’s Tickled Pink Campaign.’

Of course, phones that can be re-used have even greater benefits for the environment as it means little, if any, new materials are used.

‘The phones which still work are refurbished and sold on as an affordable form of communication to people in countries where landlines are less reliable than mobile networks’ says Peter.

‘For each working handset, £1.50 goes to Tickled Pink and we also pay for a tree to be planted in Africa through our partnership with TREE AID. It’s a unique service.’

TREE AID is the UK’s only forestry focused development charity. They work to provide funding and on-the-ground training to people in the poorest villages in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana and Mali: countries where 90% of people depend on trees for their basic survival needs.

Our future …

As Peter Friend explains, the scheme also comes with an incentive for customers: ‘We run a prize draw every three months, so anyone who sends us their phones in an ASDA envelope has a chance to win £500 worth of store vouchers. However, the ASDA scheme is unique in that it’s the only retail-based scheme we run where the charity partners are the main beneficiaries.’

Since the scheme began in 2007, ASDA customers and colleagues have helped TREE AID to plant nearly 3000 trees, and raised over £5,500 for Tickled Pink — a campaign which supports the work of Breast Cancer Care and Breast Cancer Campaign.

‘It’s a fantastic idea, and I hope many more of our customers and colleagues will start to use the phone recycling envelopes in the year to come’ enthuses Lara Wantanaar of ASDA’s Community team.

It’s a sentiment Peter echoes: ‘We’re looking forward to building on the success of 2007, and raising even more money for the good causes that depend on these donations.’