Product Stewardship & Mobile Phone Life Cycle

Mobile Phone Life Cycle - Flowchart - click here to download PDF
Where do mobile phones go - Poster - click here to download PDF

Mobile Phone Product Stewardship, Refurbishment, Reuse & Recycling

AMTA supports the principles of sustainability and product stewardship and its members are committed to continually reducing the environmental impact of telecommunications products throughout their life cycle from design, manufacture, handling to use and disposal by:

• improving the efficiency of resource use in products
• increasing resource recovery
• minimising the generation of waste (including hazardous substances)
• improving the management of post-consumer waste and
• reducing the risks to human health from poor management of products.

As all handsets are manufactured overseas, AMTA encourages handset manufacturers locally to promote product stewardship throughout their overseas parent.

AMTA is committed to ensuring consumers are informed about what they can do to reduce the environmental burden of mobile phone products by:

• encouraging people to extend the useful life of their mobile phone by repairing it at any handset manufacturer certified service centre, and
• promoting its mobile phone recycling program MobileMuster, through which used mobile phones are permanently removed from the waste stream with the entire product being recycled in the most environmentally sound and controlled manner and with over 90% of the materials being recovered to make new products.

Although AMTA is focused on promoting the recycling of mobile phones through its member funded program, AMTA also recognises that refurbishment and reselling of used mobile phones is a legitimate global commercial activity that can extend the useful life of mobile phones, improving access to communications and providing social and economic benefits.

AMTA considers that refurbishment and reselling is only appropriate when it is conducted in a manner consistent with the UNEP Basel Convention Guideline on the Refurbishment of Used Mobile Phones. That is the repair and reconditioning of used mobile phones is done in an environmentally sound manner that will protect human health and where the mobile phones re-entering the market comply with applicable original equipment manufacturer technical performance standards and regulatory requirements.

AMTA members are also committed to mitigating the environmental impacts of packaging associated with its products with a number its members also being signatories to the National Packaging Covenant.

UNEP Basel Convention, Mobile Phone Partnership Initiative – http://www.basel.int/industry/mppi.html