If you lost your phone, AirPods, or laptop while travelling, chances are you’d try and find it. But every year, thousands of phones are abandoned on planes, trains and buses, and they’re never claimed.
Rather than throw them away, after around 90 days, many of the devices are sold to a small Aussie business. Based in a warehouse in an outer Melbourne suburb, PhoneCycle then wipes them clean, strips them for parts or refurbishes them.
It showcased an array of electronics it had refurbished at this year’s WasteExpo in Melbourne, allowing visitors to try their luck at winning a device. Without its service, the items could simply be thrown away.
Over 700,000 devices have been processed by PhoneCycle. Source: Supplied
Easy tip on how to get your lost phone back
PhoneCycle’s managing director, Owen Jones, told Yahoo News most businesses try and find their owners, but doing so is difficult.
“Most people have an activation lock — a pin code or fingerprint recognition — so it does make it hard in this day and age to find who it belongs to. You can’t sift through their phonebook and give their contacts a buzz,” he said.
When a customer comes looking for a lost device, it can be hard to determine which one they own. Source: Supplied
On rare occasions, owners have tracked down their devices using the Find My Phone app, and while they eventually locate them, it’s a challenge because most are the same colour. “A couple of times the police have even knocked on our door and said, You’ve got a ‘stolen’ device here,” Jones said.
But, more often than not, once a device is handed to PhoneCycle, where it is scrubbed, if it is salvageable, it’s sold on eBay, Temu, Kogan, Rebello, Redail, or Amazon with a 12-month warranty. “We’d love everyone to get their device back and keep using it. My advice is just put a sticker on the back under the phone cover with another contact number,” Jones said.
The average device is sold for around $230. And it’s often elderly people, school kids, or people struggling for money who will purchase them.
Having processed over 700,000 devices, the business has donated $900,000, a small portion of its profits, to charity. Much of the money has been donated to environment groups, including those protecting gorillas from illegal mining of coltan — a mineral used in electronics.
PhoneCycle also donates phones to a domestic violence charity, which hands them to survivors in emergencies.
How long does it take to wipe a phone for resale?
It’s not just phones that have been dropped off at the company’s Ringwood headquarters. They’ve also accepted electronic drum kits, sleep apnea machines, and even metal detecting equipment.
Once accepted, the electronics are examined to see if screens are cracked, the cameras are broken, if it needs a new battery, and what’s salvageable.
When laptops are discovered to contain data, they’re powered on and erased using a diagnostic device, with the process taking 30 to 40 minutes. Android and Apple phones are much faster to process, with up to eight devices at a time wiped in just five to 10 minutes.
Many of the phones can’t be factory reset, and so they only have value in parts. But reusing rare minerals keeps them out of landfill and reduces harmful mining in places like Congo, where rainforest is being destroyed.
“The key thing is sustainability. It is all about the circular economy and reusing rather than recycling,” Jones said.
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