Since all refurbishers report reuse yields higher than 50%, they can afford to bear the cell phone collection cost and offer the return incentives required to successfully access the pool of stored end-of-use handsets. In fact, cell phone recycling is currently mostly a side-effect of cell phone reuse, since most of the recycled handsets are rejects from refurbishers.
Business models and costs are very similar regarding cell phone recycling, which primarily serves to reduce losses from non-reusable handsets and increase the environmental reputation of the refurbishers. European refurbishers also offer to ensure WEEE compliance for industrial suppliers of
retired cell phones. Handset reuse processes and costs are also very similar across refurbishers, none of which engage in major reprocessing operations as mentioned earlier.
The main challenge of refurbishers is thus to choose return incentives and collection systems that maximize the difference between resale values and reverse logistics costs.
The most significant differences between business models are thus approaches to and methods of handset collection.