Use, Reuse, Recycle: Proximus collects old phones

“Proximus has always attached great importance to corporate social responsibility,” says Frédéric Lhostte, Circular Economy Lead Enterprise Business Unit at Proximus. “Sustainability is one of the pillars of our strategy. Recycling, using less and using longer. That is our motto. We have been a CO2-neutral company for our own activities for some time now. Proximus commits to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the value chain by 2040 from a 2020 base year.

Enormous potential

The mobile phone is a device with a fairly limited lifespan. “It’s estimated that people have at least three million old phones somewhere in a drawer or a closet in our country,” says Frédéric Lhostte. “Currently only five percent of old phones are recycled, while a mobile phone is ninety percent recyclable.” With this initiative, Proximus wants to make the consumer aware of the enormous potential hiding in that mountain of old mobile phones – and in electronic waste in general.

Fifty times more efficient than mining

‘Use, Reuse, Recyle’ emphasizes urban mining; instead of extracting raw materials by conventional mining, the project goes in search of raw materials in the city by recycling old phones. “Urban mining is fifty times more efficient than conventional mining,” Frédéric Lhostte explains. A ton of ore yields 5 grams of gold. A recycling company can get 250 grams of gold from a ton of old mobile phones.

Proximus collaborates with various partners in this. First of all, Proximus gathers all the collected phones at the Courcelles site. BrainscapeOpens a new window is the partner that checks whether a phone is reusable and separate out the electronic waste.

Frédéric Lhostte, Head of IoT & Analytics and Circular Economy Lead Enterprise Business Unit at Proximus

The actual recycling of raw materials takes place at Umicore in Hoboken; gold, silver, copper and palladium, among other things, from the circuit boards of the mobile phones, in addition to cobalt, lithium and nickel from the batteries. “Furthermore, anyone who brings his old mobile phone into a Proximus Shop gets € 20 extra trade-in value for doing so,” Frédéric Lhostte continues.

Eight: support to Congo

Eight is a Belgian organization that provides financial support to a small town in Congo. The people are using this to start their own small business. In this way they are developing their own alternative to working in illegal, dangerous and unhealthy cobalt mining. “Eight distributes the money via an app, so that the people in Congo can pay digitally with their mobile phone,” Frédéric Lhostte concludes. “So the circle is complete.”