Practicing Resource Efficiency: We Collect Your Old Mobile Phones

A cooperation of the Insitute of Materials Science, the TU Office for Sustainability and the Hochschulgruppe Nachhaltigkeit e.V. (University Group Sustainability)

85% of all Germans have at least one mobile phone laying around unused.[1] Altogether this corresponds to approx. 200 million devices containing roughly 1’322 t of copper, 20 t of silver and many more important and precious resources that are withdrawn from the product life cycle.[2] Consequently, unnecessarily high amounts of primary resources have to be mined for the production of new electronic devices causing severe environmental and social damage.

We collect your old phones and donate them to Pro Wildlife e.V., who will have them professionally recycled or if possible refurbished. Revenues are fed into the Pro Wildlife monkey conservation program. For more information click here [external link, German only, sorry].

The collection box is to be found in the MaWi learning center (Lernzentrum, MaLZ) in building L2|01, room 29 (entry floor, right next to the main entrance).

The cooperation runs another collection box on the campus Stadtmitte, inside the Café/Bar 221qm (Alexanderstraße 2).

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[1] Bitkom Befragung 2020.

[2] Bookhagen, Bastian (2020). CommodityTopNews 65: Metalle in Smartphones. Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe, Hannover.