Waste management and recycling

In June 2010, in the HQ premises in New Belgrade, we introduced the practice of waste sorting in different bins for different waste such as paper, plastic and aluminium. Employees can also collect plastic corks, which we hand over to the "Čep za handikep" organization.

Telecommunications equipment, components of IT equipment, computers, mobile phones and other electronic devices that are no longer in use contain hazardous substances, and therefore improper disposal of this equipment could have major consequences for human health and the environment. As part of the waste management system,

Yettel refers this type of waste for further treatment or recycling. The company also generates significant amounts of packaging waste, such as paper, cardboard, plastic, etc. and in accordance with the legal regulations, this waste is handed over for recycling.

All citizens, as well as legal entities, can bring their old phones to Yettel stores throughout Serbia and thus participate in the process of recycling old devices, i.e. reducing the amount of electrical and electronic waste, and ultimately reducing emissions that increase the greenhouse effect. Everyone who brings their phone for recycling gets a voucher to buy a phone or a smartwatch at Yettel. With the recycling program, we have completed the ecosystem

"Everything for the phone, phone for everyone", and the status of recycled phones in pieces and tons can be found at the following link. In this way, we raise the awareness of citizens about the growing problem of electronic waste that affects environmental pollution and the harmfulness of mobile phone batteries, and finally on the importance of recycling.

The process of recycling old phones and its importance for the environment is reflected in the following:

Mobile phones are manually disassembled into components: battery, plastics, metals, rubber, glass, printed circuit board.
Secondary raw materials - plastics, rubber, metals, glass, are handed over to authorized operators for reuse.
Printed boards contain metals and plastics, as well as precious metals that can be reused after recycling.
Batteries contain heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium and are therefore highly toxic to the environment (water, soil), and require a special method of recycling. Most waste batteries are classified as hazardous waste. The main advantage of recycling batteries is a reduction in the primary production of materials and energy generating products, and the emissions of mercury, lead, and cadmium into the environment.
Batteries are melted to extract different reusable metals, thus reducing the need to search for new natural resources, as well as the amount of newly created waste.
Small batteries are manually removed from devices and some metals such as zinc, metal compounds of manganese, cobalt, mercury, silver, lead, cadmium, nickel and other useful metals and compounds can be recovered from them for reuse.