• by Aaron Baar , February 12, 2009

With its own company research showing that nine of every 10 consumers have at least one old, unused mobile phone, Sprint has set a goal of recovering 90% of old phones (compared with its sales rate) for reuse or recycling by 2017, backed by a marketing effort that will include in-store, viral and perhaps traditional marketing techniques.

The company is already enhancing its in-store collateral addressing phone recycling, and has set a goal of including a postage-paid envelope for its recycling program with all of its new phones, says company representative Alexander Hahn. In addition, Sprint will create an Internet video--to be posted on its corporate Web site and on YouTube--highlighting the need for cell phone recycling.

"We're going to show consumers the size of our recycling program and try to put it into a larger context," Hahn tells Marketing Daily. "[The video will include] deconstructing a phone and showing the things that come out of recycling it."

According to Hahn, materials from cell phones can be used in other products ranging from jewelry to asphalt to lawn furniture. Sprint has two recycling programs already in place. One, for customers, provides account credits for returned phones. The other, for non-customers, accepts phones as a donation for its charitable 4NetSafety program.

The company is also looking at incorporating the message into broader advertisements, perhaps tagging its television ads with a recycling message, Hahn says. Details of broadening the reach have not been completely worked out, he says.

According to Sprint, there are about 270 million cell phone users in the United States. Every year more than 140 million cell phones are discarded in the country, most of them going to landfills or incinerators. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (which is working with Sprint on the recycling program), for every one million phones recycled, enough energy could be saved to provide electricity to 2,000 U.S. homes a year. In 2008, Sprint collected more than 3 million phones--about 34% of its sales. In 2007, its percentage of collections to sales was 22%.

"EPA commends Sprint for taking the lead among its industry peers in setting a 90% recycling goal for its wireless recycling efforts," said Matt Hale, director of the EPA's office of conservation and resource recovery, in a statement. "In providing customers with easy-to-use recycling opportunities, Sprint is helping consumers to conserve valuable resources."