4 Conclusions
This paper presents detailed economic data on cell phone collection, reuse, and recycling. The data clearly show that profitability of cell phone reuse is currently by far the largest driver of end-of-use handset collection, both in the USA and in Europe.
In fact, the reverse logistics of cell phone recycling currently appears to be entirely financed by
cell phone refurbishers and could thus be regarded as a byproduct of cell phone reuse.
On its own, cell phone collection and recycling could never be done profitably, even if reverse logistics costs were to be minimized.