At times it must seem as if adverts for buying back old mobile phones pepper all the popular TV programs. We’ve everything from cute animated mobile characters trying to persuade you that they’ll be happy to be sold for money and recycled off to a growing economy elsewhere to blondes trying to buy their new hat by handing their now-not-fashionable mobile over to the shop assistant.

What started out as a niche, populated by new starts and unknown brands has become very competitive. This competition has attributed to two trends;

1. Bigger brands are now involved. Heck. Even Boots is in on the act.
2. There’s less focus on the environmental and more emphasis on the cash.

Is that a good thing? Surely those brands which took the green angle might want to keep it to help differentiate themselves from larger competitors moving into the space?

This is a green blog. We think it’s a good thing to keep the emphasis on the green side of mobile phone recycling.

Other, wiser and more gadget friendly blogs – like In Pure Spirit and TreeHugger – will know which mobile phone companies also offer phone recycling but the very fact the mobile operators are moving into this sphere is another warning sign for the original companies?