Sustainable solutions: Recycle your mobile phone

Recycling unwanted mobile phones saves valuable materials from ending up in landfill. I recently picked up a Free Post ‘Recycle Your Mobile Phone’ envelope from Re:mobile.

The Re:mobile service supports Sustainable Coastlines, an organisation which delivers coastal clean up events, riparian planting projects and runs educational programmes and public awareness campaigns, enabling people to look after our coastlines and waterways.

According to information printed on the envelope $100,000 has been raised from the proceeds of unwanted mobile phones since 2016, helping Sustainable Coastlines to plant over 10,000 trees and plants alongside waterways around Aotearoa.

The Sustainable Coastlines website offers several options to get your old phone to Re:Mobile, the company they use to recycle them. • You can drop the envelope off to any 2degrees, Spark or Vodafone retail store, to a Resene ColorShop or Auckland Council. • The envelope can be posted to Re:mobile, PO Box 8746, Symonds

Street, Auckland 1150 or Freepost, Re:mobile, Private Bag 208004,

Highbrook, Auckland 2161. • It can be couriered to Re:mobile, C/- Swapkit Ltd, Unit 6/30 Fleet

Street, Eden Terrace, Auckland 1021 • And, if you work in Auckland city, you can also drop mobile phones into the Sustainable Coastlines’ Flagship Education Centre, corner

Beaumont and Madden Streets, Wynyard Quarter, Auckland. (Open 10am-5pm daily.)

has been developed to help practitioners working in pest control, landowners and land managers, conservation volunteers and community groups, and students and researchers.

You can start searching in two different ways: • Clues, if you have field sign you wish to identify, or • Culprits, if you suspect a particular species or simply want to know more about certain pest animals.

Once you have identified your culprit(s) you can go to the Next Steps page for links to pest control and pest animal monitoring.

There are many other New Zealand nature apps, for both Android and Apple devices. You might like to check out: • NZ Bird Gallery, which lets you download a bird song as a ring tone • Star Chart (from Escapist Games) • NZ Birding Checklist for location, sightings and bird call identification ($3.99) • A mobile version of the book Birds of New Zealand by Paul Scofield and Brent Stevenson. ($54.99)

Before donating your mobile phone: 1. If the phone still turns on, disconnect it from any cloud service and complete a factory reset to erase any data from the phone. 2. Remove your sim card from the phone and keep it. 3. Leave the battery in the phone. 4. Switch the phone off.

Recycling your phone responsibly could mean another tree will flourish.

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