Return incentives vary
widely across collecting agents and geographies. Some agents will offer to buy back the phone, while others will only cover shipping costs. The buy-back price can range from a few dollars to $40–50, depending on handset model and condition [6].
Some agents use donations to charities as return incentive, which has been found to work well in
some countries and not at all in others [5].
Table 1 shows the average costs of the three reverse logistics processes for several take-back enterprises in the UK in 2003 and in 2006 in the USA [5, 6].
The 2003 pound have first been converted into 2003 dollar using the average annual exchange rate from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and then converted in 2006 dollar using the gross
domestic product deflator of the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.