Do I get a recycling voucher for my old dead phone?

I used my old phone until it was finally dead. Therefore I wanted to buy a new one, this time a fair one (FP3). Do you think I can still get a voucher even if my phone isn’t capable of booting anymore? I thought this was the whole point of recycling old phones instead of having them piling up in a basement. Now I read in the recycling policy, that my phone has to be bootable.

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No, that’s the one condition.

Fairphone is committed to reusing/recycling old phones, but they still have to be profitable. If they would just use up all their money to buy trash that costs more money to recycle they would be bankrupt soon.

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No, you get no voucher if phone doesn’t boot.
Your question was already raised here:

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Thank you both for your quick response!

I wasn’t ask that when I requested a shipping label, so I wasn’t sure. I thought that the materials (akku does still work) would have a value too.

Okay. So couldn’t they recycle or use anything because it’s too expensive to do so? ( If I would send it in without wanting any money, just for the sake of a proper recycling? I read that most of our electronic waste is wasting away somewhere in Africa and I hoped that there would be a better way… =( )

You can ask them, but they still might tell you it’s better to find a local recycling facility.

There is. And thankfully Fairphone are not the only ones going that way. They can probably recommend a good recycling facility in your area if you ask them.

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Vielen lieben Dank! :+1:

Second condition is that you bought a FP3. This makes the money balance different.

In my opinion, cost for recycling should be included when buying new stuff.

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When I requested a shipping label, the legal conditions did not make sense because they referred to buying a FP2. I did not take it to seriously and send my old FP1 for recycling. I can remember a sentence like “make sure your phone can be turned on”, but I (probably mis-) interpreted this as a check to see if my new FP3 worked before sending the old one.

I complained at Fairphone about the out of date conditions and later they were updated.

Can you elaborate a little on why this currently isn’t the case? A lot of people assume that the WEEE charges that are paid when purchasing a new device cover the recycling costs of that device. I’m not familiar enough with WEEE directives to be able to assess whether that is true or not.

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WEEE (Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment) is mine specialism neither.
Most probably we do pay for recycling when buying new electronic equipment.

Initially I thought that Fairphone mainly started the recycling program to get recycling on a higher level. But with the condition “make sure your phone can be turned on”, the program is also focused on removing working phones from the market. Using products till end of live should be stimulated in my view. Now I get money if I don’t wait for my old phone to die.

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