The government has announced that it will clamp down on mobile phone recycling. This is in an effort to stop the illegal recycling of stolen handsets.

A new charter was agreed following a government consultation with the mobile phone recycling industry.

Nearly 100,000 stolen UK mobile phones are recycled and sold each year, in an illegal racket that is worth more than £4m.

The new initiative will require recycling firms to check mobile phones against a nationally established database, the National Mobile Phone Register. Phones that are highlighted as stolen will have to be turned over to the government rather than sold.