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?

Google’s new Nexus One mobile phone could become embroiled in a legal battle over its name. According to a report on Sky News, the family of sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick have reportedly asked Google to stop using the Nexus One name.

For geeks among us, they will know the connection between the two, but for those who don’t here’s an explanation.

Phillip K. Dick is the cult sci-fi author responsible for the book ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ which formed the basis for the film ‘Bladerunner’, starring Harrison Ford. In the book, a bounty hunter known as Nexus 6 (or six) chased down cyborgs. In the film, Nexus Six was a class of ‘replicant’ – a cyborg designed to look human.

Google’s phone, which was launched earlier in the week and has created a large amount of buzz, runs Google’s Android operating system.

The family of Phillip K. Dick claim intellectual-property infringement by Google and have asked the search giant to stop using the name, claiming there is a clear association between the characters of Dicks’ work and the name for Google’s latest creation.

Google have so far refused to comment on the claims by Dicks’ family, but say the name has nothing to do with the author’s work and that their use of the word ‘Nexus’ was used in its original sense, as a place where things converge.