A mobile phone created from Twickenham’s grass cuttings and recycled mobile phone parts was unveiled last month.
O2 commissioned the prototype recycled plastic handset to celebrate the launch of ‘Recycle for Rugby’, part of the Rugby Football Union’s social responsibility agenda ‘Try for Change’. The programme aims to use rugby as a tool for positive social change and it is thought that this grass and recycled plastic mobile phone will encourage people to recycle their old mobile phone parts.
GRASS PHONE
The designer, Sean Miles, from DesignWorks, said “We wanted to give the ‘old and forgotten’ a new lease of life and create a thought provoking prototype which would make people stop and think about recycling in a new and different way. The phone itself is incredibly striking and those who use it can pick out every blade of grass and imagine the incredible rugby games which have been played over them.”
In a build taking over 240 hours, thousands of grass blades were mixed with a recycled plastic resin to create the casing. Locally-sourced wood was used for the buttons. Waste electronics is the fastest growing waste stream on Earth, with the amount of mobile devices we use growing considerably and outdated electronics deemed superfluous.
O2 Recycle, the telecom’s in-house recycling scheme, has received over 1.4 million items since it launched in 2009, and claims to find a new purpose for 90% of these. High-end gadgets can fetch up to £260 through this service, which accepts more than just mobile phones; items such as tablets, sat-nav devices and cameras are taken, as well as others.
