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Every collection campaign for old mobile phones raises the same question: what actually happens to those devices afterwards? Too often, they are sent straight to recycling, even though a significant share is still technically fit for use.
In 2024, nearly 6.5 million discarded electrical and electronic devices were collected via Recupel and its partners. With this new collaboration, both organisations explicitly place reuse at the heart of the circular economy, ahead of recycling.
The music fades, tents come down and the festival grounds slowly empty. What remains are thousands of small decisions made by visitors. Last summer, festivalgoers handed in more than 20,000 old mobile phones. An impressive number, but above all the start of a journey that usually remains unseen. Because what actually happens to a device once it is handed in?
Brainscape processed the mobile phones collected during the campaign organized by Pommelien Thijs, Recupel, and Ancienne Belgique into a concrete circular flow: devices were given a second life where possible, and the rest was safely recycled.