Four post offices in Hérault are starting to recycle used telephones, including the one in Béziers-Clemenceau

La Poste lance une expérimentation pour collecter les vieux téléphones mobiles. Midi Libre – PIERRE SALIBA

Béziers-Clemenceau, Agde, Lattes et Montpellier-Rondelet, ce sont les quatre bureaux de poste qui testent ce projet de collecte des vieux téléphones.

Until the end of December 2024, the Béziers-Clemenceau Post Office is one of four establishments that will test this experiment. It is now possible to drop off your old mobile phone there. "The aim is to be able to contribute to giving a second life to our old phones and to be in the most ecological approach possible," underlines Guillaume Mancera, from the La Poste group.

And depending on the results, the system could be maintained. Or even expanded: “We are on an experiment so we will see after our first assessment if we set up this collection in other offices, explains Guillaume Mancera. We have already carried out this process in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, more than 1,000 telephones have been collected. The system has therefore been maintained."

A project overseen by Ecologic

To successfully complete this project, La Poste has entrusted coordination to the non-profit company Ecologic (see below). "This collection is carried out as part of the system called EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility), which is in place at European level and which requires Member States to make producers responsible, to finance and process their end-of-life equipment," explains Romuald Ribault, Marketing Director at the Ecologic company.

The collection is well supervised, and the circuit followed by the old mobiles is already all mapped out. “Once the citizen drops off their old phone, everything goes to a reconditioning service provider, says Romuald Ribault. The latter tests the equipment and determines which ones are reconditionable, and which ones are not. If this is the case, they follow a classic reconditioning process and are then put back on the market. Otherwise, they are sent to a treatment operator who will depollute them and then recycle them, that is to say transform them into new raw materials.”

To encourage citizens to recycle their old phones, La Poste has set up commercial offers to recognize their gesture. Under certain conditions, they can benefit from a 10 euro discount on all packages, with or without commitment, or a 30 euro discount on the purchase of a reconditioned smartphone. These offers cannot be combined.

Who is the company Ecologic ?

“Ecologic is an eco-organization, explains Romuald Ribault. It is a private law SAS but invested with a mission of general interest by approvals from three ministries: the Environment, which is logical, the Interior, because we work with local authorities, and Finance, because we are financed by the eco-contribution. What characterizes the eco-organization is that the shareholder must be a marketer, therefore a company. We are very controlled structures."

Before concluding: "We have another system called Weeetri, a service that aims to allow our employees to bring their small devices to their workplace so that they can be recycled. It's completely free, and we carry out collections once a year or from 250 kg of products collected.”