A recent report has claimed that with the rising number of new smart phones hitting the market, more and more people in the UK could end up recycling their phones.

Over recent years a rising number of smart phones from a wide range of manufacturers have been hitting the shelves in the UK, with new offering from high profile manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung and HTC amongst others. With the added bells and whistles that each version of the smart phones tend to have when they are brought out, many cannot resist dumping their old phones and rushing out to get a more high tech one.

One industry expert said that the increase in the number of smart phones coming onto the market has resulted in increased competition, which could help to fuel phone recycling amongst those that decide that they want to upgrade their phones and get one of the newer ones, leaving them with old ones that they need to get rid of.

Dominic Sunnebo, a senior official at consumer trends specialist Kantar Worldpanel, said that each time a new phone was released by Apple up to six million people in the UK alone rushed to buy it, which means that potentially there were millions of phones to recycle with the release of just one new smart phone from a high profile manufacturer.

He added that he though Nokia could have a big impact on recycling this year, stating: “I think Nokia is going to make a big impact in 2012. I think we’ve just seen sales of the Nokia Lumia 800 kick off and the first signs are pretty positive.”