To stay with this week’s topic of “Green Decluttering” I have found out a couple of ways to get rid of your excess mobile phones without simply dumping them.

If you’re on a contract or simply a bit of a techno geek and like to have the latest model you will probably have a few more phones than you are actually using. They also can (and should be) decluttered.

But instead of simply throwing them out, which is really a bit of a waste, especially if they are still fully functional you can do one of two things:

1. Give them to charity

Charities have different ways of making money out of used mobile phones. Just make sure the charity in question actually takes mobile phones.

Here is a list of couple of charities that do:

• WDCS – Save the Whales and Dolphins (they even have special little bags that they send out for that particular purpose)
• www.phones4schools.co.uk
• http://www.greensource.co.uk/
• Casa Alianza – Help for Street Children
• and many more. Simply google “donate mobile phones” for more options.

2. Sell them

You can also sell your unwanted mobiles for hard cash. There are dozens of places that buy, recondition and sell on your phone. Here are some of them (some of them are also charitable organisations):

• http://www.shpforcharity.co.uk/
• http://www.coolafone.com/rewards/
• http://www.fonebank.com/oxfam/
• http://www.mazumamobile.com/
• and many more. Simply google “sell mobile phone” for more options.

This week’s main post it’s all about Green Decluttering. There are so many more ideas that I thought I’d stay with it a little bit longer.

I have already mentioned Freecycle (http://www.uk.freecycle.org/). Here are some more ideas for recycling furniture:

The Furniture Reuse Network (www.frn.org.uk) is a national charity which collects furniture donations for households living on income benefit: they refurbish and recycle over 2 million items a year.

Any Junk (www.anyjunk.co.uk) will collect items from your door (costs from £25) and they claim that over 50 per cent of their loads are not dumped on a landfill (larger items like sofas are donated to charities)

These ideas are taken from www.angelsandurchins.co.uk from their feature on decluttering. On their website you find useful parenting information for people living in and around London.