Mobile phones aren’t particularly good for the environment, they need large amounts of energy and raw materials to manufacture, and their disposal in many cases contributes to the growing problem of landfill. But they are very handy, and for many of us they’re an absolute essential. So, while nobody has yet created a biodegradable eco-phone, you can make your phone more planet friendly by hanging on to it for longer (most phones will last for 5 years or more), and you can make sure that it’s recycled at the end of its life, rather than just dropped into the nearest bin, where the cadmium from just one phone can pollute 600,000 litres of water. Here are two more choices that you can make to make your mobile phone habit just a little bit greener:

Save energy

Mobile phone chargers should be switched off when you’re not using them or they continue to use the same amount of electricity as when you are charging your phone.

Make a better choice

When you are replacing an old phone (reduce waste by recycling it - see above), put some thought into which new phone to buy. Not all phones are created equal, and to help us out, ethiscore.org have scored mobile phone manufacturers according to their environmental accountability. None of the manufacturers came out looking very green, but here are the top 3 to go for: HTC, Blackberry and BenQ.