Cash to encourage mobile recycling

THE GOVERNMENT is looking to launch an eco-bonus scheme for anyone who takes their old mobile phone back to the shop to be recycled.

Junior Ecology Minister Chantal Jouanno said the bonus-malus would pay "a few euros" to encourage people to hand in their phones.

She told France 2 that there were "about 100 million mobiles sleeping in a drawer somewhere" and the recycling rate was currently less than 3%.

Some mobile operators already run their own schemes, and an independent site called Fonebank.fr launched this summer, which pays a small amount and donates the old phone to a developing country.

According to tech website Silicon.fr, the average person changes their mobile phone every two years.