According to statistics from Hitwise there has been a rise of 189% in internet searches for mobile phone recycling over the past year.

Internet searches in the UK for terms such as recycle mobile phones, mobile phone recycling and phone recycling have risen by 189% between the week ending 17 May 2008 and the corresponding week in 2009. This illustrates the increasing consumer demand and propensity for consumers wanting to sell mobile phones.

In these troubles times consumers are able to recycling mobile phones for cash, and let’s face it we all have an old mobile somewhere lurking about. Visitors to company websites offering money in return for old mobile phones has increased by more than 200% over the same period. One such site is www.fonebank.com, one of the most popular mobile phone recycling websites.

Money seems to dinitely be the key, maybe more so than the desire to do right by the environment as searches for keywords such as recycle mobile phones for cash and recycling for cash have quadrupled over the last year. Given the sums on offer, especially for some of the newer models of mobile phones, this is maybe to be expected, especially as the country is in recession and many UK consumers are desperately looking for a few extra pounds.