Queanbeyan West Public School students lived up to their school motto, “Nothing but the Best”, when named today the winners of the national MobileMuster Schools Recycling Challenge, beating more than 300 schools with their mobile phone recycling efforts.

The MobileMuster National Schools Recycling Challenge was created by the official recycling program of the mobile phone industry, MobileMuster, to help students learn about mobile phone recycling and to encourage them to round up and recycle all those old and unused mobile phones lying around at homes.

Queanbeyan West Public School rounded up a mammoth 136 kg of mobile phones, batteries, chargers and accessories, which is fifteen times the average school collection of 9 kg.

Nationally, participating schools collected 2,130 kg of mobile phones for recycling, including an estimated 10,520 handsets.

Chris Althaus, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Mobile Telecommunication Association’s (AMTA), said Queanbeyan West Public School’s collection included more than 660 mobile phone handsets.

“That’s nearly two mobiles per student. We congratulate Queanbeyan West Public School staff, teachers, students and parents for their phenomenal recycling efforts.

“With more than 90% of the plastics and metals in the mobiles being recovered during recycling we estimate that the students have helped recover 12.2 kg of plastics, 7.4 kg of copper, 1.9 kg of silver and 4 grams of gold. Four grams of recovered gold alone is equal to mining one tonne of gold ore

“It is wonderful to see the children, their families and the school staff working together to deliver real environmental benefits”, added Mr Althaus

In recognition of their efforts Queanbeyan West Public School received a $900 gift voucher to purchase native tree stock from their local Greening Australia Nursery and each student received a mobilemuster backpack.

State winners in the MobileMuster National Schools Recycling Challenge are:

ACT – North Ainslie Primary School, Ainslie – 28 kg

NSW - Queanbeyan West Primary School, Queanbeyan NSW – 136 kg

NT – Durack Primary School, Durack, NT – 11 kg

QLD – Albany Hills State School, Albany Creek - 44 kg

SA – Portside Christian School, Estella, SA – 22 kg

VIC – Mackellar Primary School SE, Delahey, VIC – 36 kg

WA – Mundaring Primary School, Mundaring, WA – 33 kg

Each school and their students also received a selection of rewards, including pencil case kits, slap wrist watches, back packs and gift vouchers to purchase native trees from Greening Australia or Men of Trees (WA only) nurseries, depending on how many kilograms of mobile phones they collected.

Residents can still hand in their old mobile phones, batteries, accessories and chargers for recycling at any one of MobileMuster’s 3,500 drop-off points nationally. Alternatively they can pick up a free recycling satchel from participating Australia Post outlets or download a free reply paid label from www.mobilemuster.com.au

To find your nearest MobileMuster drop off point or to download a free mailing label go to www.mobilemuster.com.au or call 1300 730 070.

Mobile phones are not biodegradable and contain small amounts of potentially harmful substances which if not managed properly may harm the environment

MobileMuster is a whole of industry not for profit program that is funded voluntarily by handset and accessory manufacturers Nokia, Motorola, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Sharp, NEC, Panasonic, I-Mate, Force Technology and network carriers Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, 3 Mobile, Virgin Mobile and AAPT.