Local MP Kitty Ussher has teamed up with a group called Phones 4 Africa to help people find a use for their unwanted mobile phones. In Britain  an average of 1,712 mobile phones are upgraded every hour, and mobile phone users often upgrade their phones after 18 months, despite the fact that most phones have a lifespan of around ten years, leaving many old phones to be dumped in drawers or thrown in the bin.

If all mobile phone users in the UK threw their old phones in the bin, we’d be land filling £650,000 worth of silver a year, not to mention all the toxic chemicals that would leak into the environment.

However, in developing nations mobile phones are very much needed - in 19 African countries mobile phones account for 75% of all phone connections.

This why the Phones 4 Africa campaign has been launched by a group of MPs, (the All Party Parliamentary Group on Communications, and the All Party Group on Nigeria) to encourage mobile phone users to donate their old phones to developing countries.

Kitty Ussher, Burnley MP has got on board with the campaign and is encouraging constituents to drop their unwanted phones into her office, or to post them to her at 2 Victoria Street, Burnley, BB11 1DD, and she will pass them on to the Phones 4 Africa Campaign.

Kitty Ussher said;

“This is a great initiative, it’s an easy way for us to help people who really need it at no cost to ourselves. I really hope that as many of my constituents as possible will recycle their old phones by dropping them off at my office, which is just opposite the main post office on Hargreaves Street in Burnley Town Centre”

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