London, 4th November 2009: Orange today launches Recycle & Reward, a scheme for people to recycle their old mobiles, laptops and personal music players in UK Orange stores in exchange for cash. Two thirds of Brits have old mobiles gathering dust in their homes which equates to approximately 90 million unused handsets worth approximately 450 million pounds*. Millions of people are eligible to receive cash rewards as the scheme is available to any member of the public at any time in all UK Orange stores. Underlining Orange’s commitment to becoming a more sustainable, greener business, Recycle & Reward will help reduce the amount of electronic goods sent to landfill and, instead, help consumers obtain a competitive price for them.
Recycle & Reward enables customers to find out the monetary value of their old electronic goods straight away in UK stores, and the money is sent to the customer in the form of a cheque received within approximately 7 days. Orange offers a range of cash rewards depending on the particular device and whether or not it currently works. For example, consumers can receive up to £85 when recycling a Nokia N95, £75 for a Sony Ericsson C905 and £95 for a Samsung SCH 900. Orange will also recycle electronic devices and accessories with no monetary value, helping the public to minimise their impact on the environment in disposing of old goods.
Orange is making a decisive step to innovate the 'Care' support it provides its customers and today it has also launched a new Copy and Keep service to enable customers to transfer essential contacts, music, and photos in all Orange retail stores. Copy and Keep removes the hassle of transferring multimedia content from old to new handsets and makes it easier for people to recycle old handsets through the Recycle and Reward scheme. The demand for such a service is illustrated by the fact that 38% of people in the UK do not back up their content because they do not know how to do it and 25% because they never remember to.** The Copy and Keep service is available free to all Orange care customers*** or costs just £6.
Paul French, Head of Care Products said: “At Orange, we’ve made some significant strides recently in reducing the environmental impact of our business. For instance, 80 percent of our electricity now comes from renewable sources while in July we introduced the mini-SIM to reduce the amount of waste associated with new SIM cards. Recycle & Reward is just another small step, for us as a business and for the public, in our journey towards greener, more sustainable practices.”
* Regeneris Research, September 2009
The £450 million figure quoted is based on the cost of an average handset a customer would recycle worth approximately £5 multiplied by 90 million (the number of unused handsets in the UK).
**ESCP Europe Research, October 2009
Respondents were interviewed in France, UK and Spain. UK respondents include a sample size of 150 people.
* ** Orange Care provides customers with a replacement phone usually within 24 hours of a claim being accepted if their phone or device is lost, stolen, damaged or breaks. Orange Care includes insurance and warranty, which are subject to terms, conditions and exclusions as stated in the Orange Care General Terms and Conditions: http://www1.orange.co.uk/mobileterms/careterms.html
