The Environmental Protection and Heritage Council has welcomed the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association Statement of Commitment and acknowledged the work by AMTA to improve mobile phone recovery and its commitment to achieve ambitious performance targets over the next five years.

Environment Ministers at a meeting in Adelaide last week also welcomed AMTA’s commitment to greater transparency, particularly noting the Association’s commitment to publish annual public reports on the performance of the MobileMuster scheme in achieving the targets.

AMTA renewed its commitment to its world-leading recycling program with an ambitious series of targets over the next five years for collection of discarded mobile phones and raising community awareness of the importance of recycling old handsets.

AMTA Chief Executive Officer, Chris Althaus, said the industry’s commitment was the next step in achieving the industry’s long-term vision of an environmentally sustainable industry, which minimises the use of resources.

“Getting the support of all the Environment Ministers is very helpful and we comment NSW for taking these ideas forward to other Ministers,” he said.

“We want to achieve an annual growth rate of around 25% for collecting old mobile phones over the next five years. This will help Australia to continue to lead the world in mobile phone recycling. However, this is a big task and the industry needs the help of the community to achieve its new goals.”