What Happens to Your Phone After You Sell With Mazuma?
If you’re considering selling your phone or have done so in the past, you may wonder what actually happens to it once you send it off. In this blog, we demystify the process of how Mazuma Mobile works to let you know exactly what happens once we receive your phone. The short answer is that your phone will be reused as much as possible, while reducing environmental harm by preventing it from going to landfill. We take every care to restore and rehome as many phones as possible, and responsibly recycle those that are broken.
What Does Mazuma Mobile Do with Your Phone?
We’re sure your main concern when you sell your phone or device with us is the price you’ll receive, and we make sure it’s as high as possible! However, it’s also good to know just what happens to your phone after we receive it. Your phone is in trusted hands with Mazuma Mobile. After our safe and secure processing, we’ll either resell it and give it a second lease of life or recycle it so you’re doing your bit for the planet.
Our process for mobile phones is as follows:
Diagnostics and Data Wiping
When we first receive your phone, we perform a full diagnostic to determine whether it can be resold straight away as a working handset, needs some fixes from us before resale, or recycling is the best option.
After this, your phone goes through a Phonecheck and Blackbelt 360 service, which are the industry standards for data erasure. This means that we fully remove all of your phone’s data and completely wipe it to ensure that no one else has access to it, making your phone completely safe for reuse.
Giving Phones a Second Life Through Refurbishment
Whenever possible, we aim to refurbish and reuse mobile phones and all other devices we receive. Some may simply need a clean, while others may need more extensive repairs. In all cases, however, our main priority is to fully recondition as many phones as possible.
If your phone is still in good working order or can be repaired, we clean, restore, and prepare it for resale at our WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Treatment Facility. This way, your phone will have a second life with someone else, who can receive it at a more affordable price.
90% of the phones we buy stay in the country as second-hand devices, because even if you feel your phone is no longer worthwhile to you, it will most likely be to someone else. When a phone we receive is ready for reuse, it will reach one of our UK phone recycling and reuse partners, such as mobile phone retailers, repair centres, and insurance companies.
Some of our handsets are also redistributed in overseas markets through our trusted network of reuse partners. As such, your phone may go on to make a significant impact in helping drive social change and economic growth in developing countries.
Recycling Broken Phones
If your mobile phone is broken and can’t be repaired, it doesn’t go to waste, as its components are reutilised as much as possible.
Even if your phone is no longer working, it still contains many perfectly usable components that can be used to create new phones and many other items. These are often in the form of precious metals, such as platinum, gold, silver, copper, and nickel, which can be melted down and used again. Any plastics and glass in your phone that are viable will also be stripped and recycled.
Removing Dangerous Materials
While your phone contains many valuable materials, it also contains hazardous materials that need to be handled carefully during recycling. Among these are mercury, lead, and cadmium, with some circuit boards and microchips also containing lead and arsenic, which are poisonous to living organisms if ingested in large amounts.
As a result, it’s incredibly important that you don’t just simply throw your old phone away in your general waste bin. If your phone ends up in a landfill, the toxic substances inside it could leak out and contaminate local water sources or soil. This can have a severe impact on local ecosystems and should be avoided.
These materials pose little harm when safely contained inside your phone, but the danger they pose when a device is dismantled means that recycling old devices with a company like ours is crucial.
Repurposing the Reclaimed Materials
Once all of your phone’s valuable materials have been retrieved and we’ve safely disposed of its hazardous components, we then use these materials to repair phones that come through to us before they go to a new home.
The metal reused from a single phone might not seem like much, but with the size and scale of Mazuma Mobile, this provides a substantial level of components to be salvaged for the repair of other devices – that, importantly, stay away from landfills!
Selling Your Phone Responsibly with Mazuma Mobile
Now that you know how Mazuma Mobile works, you can rest assured your phone is in safe hands when you send it to us! Whether your phone’s resold to someone who’ll get plenty of use out of it or recycled for its materials to be reused, we’re the environmentally conscious and responsible choice for trading in your phone!
If you want to sell your iPhone, sell your Samsung phone, or sell your Google Pixel, you can do so quickly and easily with us. We’ll give you the best possible price, ensure your phone is reused as best it can be, and pay you on the same day we receive it! (This applies Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays, and does not apply to orders that arrive with us after 2pm)
Have any questions about our process or selling your phone? Get in touch with us today, and a member of our team will be happy to help you out.