Nokia Press Bulletin Board

Last week at Nokia World the beta version of a new sustainable travel planning service was introduced. Called GreenExplorer, it helps people make more sustainable travel decisions is available via your mobile device by simply downloading a widget or by going to www.greenexplorer.net

GreenExplorer provides information on a range of travel issues including tips on the most sustainable methods of transport, eco-friendly places to visit, and a way to offset the CO2 emissions from your trip if you have to fly. It is also a place for travellers to share advice on a range of issues: from the best travel routes to where to find organic food, or recommendations for the best eco-friendly hotels.

The service includes information on eco-tourism from travel specialists Lonely Planet and local environmental tips from WWF, and vistors will be able to share their own tips and eco-travel ideas. In comparison to any other sort of travel guide on the market, this offers people the freshest, most up-to-date information, accessible from a mobile device. It will help to enrich trips and at the same time lessen our impact on the earth.

“Because GreenExplorer is a mobile service you can take it with you on your trip, helping you to make informed decisions about your visit and share up to date tips and hints with fellow travellers. We hope this will give people who are interested in sustainable travel some new and fun travel ideas, and create a place where these can be shared” says Minna Lindholm, Senior Environmental Manager.

What happens to most mobile devices when people no longer use them? That was the question Nokia asked more than 6, 500 people in 13 countries around the world recently. The surprising results showed that most are stored away at home because very few of us don’t know that that they can be recycled or how to do this.  

The survey conducted in Finland, Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden, UK, United Arab Emirates, USA, Nigeria, India, China, Indonesia and Brazil, found that only 3% of people recycle their mobile phones. Very few are being thrown away (4%) instead the majority (44%) are simply kept at home and never used.   

Globally, 74% of consumers said they don’t think about recycling their phones, despite the fact that around the same number, 72%, think recycling makes a difference to the environment. Nearly half of those surveyed added that they were unaware that it was even possible to recycle a mobile.  

The survey found that one of the main reasons why so few people recycle their mobile phones is because they simply don’t know that it is possible to do so. In fact, up to 80% of any Nokia device is recyclable and precious materials within it can be reused to help make new products such as kitchen kettles, park benches, dental fillings or even saxophones and other metal musical instruments.  

Mr Terho said, “Using the best recycling technology nothing is wasted. Between 65 – 80 per cent of a Nokia device can be recycled. Plastics that can’t be recycled are burnt to provide energy for the recycling process, and other materials are ground up into chips and used as construction materials or for building roads. In this way nothing has to go to landfill.”  

The results will help Nokia find out more about consumers’ attitudes and behaviors towards recycling, and inform the company’s take-back programs and efforts to increase recycling rates of unused mobile devices.

Markus Terho, Director of Environmental Affairs, Markets, at Nokia said, “If each of the three billion people globally owning mobiles brought back just one unused device we could save 240,000 tonnes of raw materials and reduce greenhouse gases to the same effect as taking 4 million cars off the road. By working together, small individual actions could add up to make a big difference.”

www.nokia.com/werecycle

Nokia has joined IBM, Sony and Pitney Bowes in offering the rights to
environmentally friendly technologies for free.
Called the Eco-Patent Commons, this is a first-of-its-kind effort to
help the environment, making dozens of innovative, environmentally
responsible patents available free of charge.

Nokia has started by donating a patent in an area where there is a lot
of potential to innovate – recycling. The patent outlines how to re-use
the computing power from unwanted mobile phones and transform these
into other electronic items such as data monitoring devices, cameras or
other electronic items that do not have cellular capability.

Further information about the project can be found at World Business
Council for Sustainable Development website at this link
http://www.wbcsd.org/web/epc