How green is that phone in your pocket?

As a fellow of the British Computer Society I get the members magazine, IT Now, and was delighted to see that the May issue concentrates on environmental costs of computing. It raises many issues I was not aware of and in discussing possible waste it points out that there is approximately 117kWh of embodied energy in a generic mobile phone but over 1,483 kWh in a modern Blackberry. Due to the way mobile phone contracts work many people upgrade a phone every 12, 18 or 24 months. That's a lot of waste. According to the US-EPA Americans alone discard 125 million phones a year producing 65,000 tons of waste. See how the Australians tackle the problem,