Like 10m other Brits did last year, I’ve just upgraded my phone. Partly it was because I wanted a new handset, but primarily it was because Orange was offering a better deal than Vodafone, and it would save me money to switch.

In the end I stayed where I was, as they matched the deal, but as they also gave me a snazzy new Sony Ericsson it means I now have a redundant mobile sitting around at home.

Mobiles are very harmful to the environment if you simply chuck them out, as the battery needs to be property disposed of, and the etched components recycled in an appropriate manner. So, I was pleased to see that when they sent me my new handset, the box packers had also slipped in a postage-paid return envelope, so I could send back my old one. Once they got their hands on it, they’d forward it on to the Third World where it’ll enjoy a useful second life in the sun.

Admirable, yet not entirely enticing, as hanging onto it gives me a fallback should the new one go wrong, get lost or be stolen.

Then I came across envirophone. It pays you to take your phone off your hands, covers all the postage, makes a donation to charity and then recycles the phone, either by sending it on to needier countries, or disposing of it in the proper way.

For my old Sony Ericsson K750i, they’ll pay me £47 in cold, hard cash or, if I prefer, send me £54.05 to spend in Argos, which will come in handy with a house move on the horizon.

Suddenly, hanging on to that old mobile ‘just in case’ doesn’t seem nearly so tempting, while for anyone pondering a paid-for upgrade, where their next mobile won’t be free, a service like this could effectively offset the full cost of a far better handset than the one they already have, depending on the contract they have in mind.

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