Note: This is my second ever sponsored post here on Mobile Industry Review. I had some good feedback after the last one a few months ago so here we go. This one is on behalf of the team at the Mobile Phone Recycling Comparison site. (It does what it says on the tin).

I’ve been recycling my handsets for quite a while. Sometimes I’ll hand them to friends and family, other times I’ll send them off to one of the cash-for-your-phone places. It’s become so mainstream nowadays that I know many colleagues who’ve actually use the services to help them upgrade their devices.

For instance, one friend walked into a mobile store recently to upgrade his iPhone 3GS to an iPhone 4. Now, I can’t recall if it was an operator store or if it was a handset retailer like Phones4U or Carphone Warehouse, however, he managed to avoid the up-front fee for the new iPhone 4 (About £120 for him) by handling them his 3GS during the transaction. He was absolutely ecstatic. I’m not sure if his girlfriend was that impressed at the concept as I reckon she was hoping to get it.

There’s substantial re-sale value in your old 3G, 3GS — indeed almost any device that’s 1-2 years old. Not many people know the true value though — something many companies have been able to turn into a substantial profit. For example, when I got my new handset from one UK operator, it came with a prepaid bag for the old one. The intent being I should stuff it into the bag and then send it to them. And they’d then be able to resell the device for a good bit of cash.

Of course there’s a ton of charities that most certainly benefit from this revenue stream too, especially if you can’t be bothered with the ‘hassle’ of posting your handset.

I’ve used a few different services and got the cash into my back account about a week after I sent them. Pretty smart.

Which brings me to the Mobile Phone Recycling Comparison site. Now, I say it does-what-it-says-on-the-tin (if you’re not familiar with the phrase, see Ronseal), because that’s all the site does: You choose your handset and the site then displays a list of companies who’ll buy your handset from you along with the prices they’re prepared to pay.

It does actually pay to shop around. For example, I clicked on the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro handset. MirrorGoGreen will offer you £45 (and they’ve got a one-star rating) whilst Envirofone (I’ve used them before) will offer you £60.04. Fonehub will stump up a whopping £78.

What’s the value of your iPhone 4 32GB? Surprisingly high. Almost £370 from Money3MyMobile (four star rating). And if you’re one of the millions with an iPhone 3GS 16GB, you might think they’re worth next-to-nothing… but SellOldPhone.co.uk (four stars too) will send you £220 for it.

£220! I think I’ve got two of these sitting gathering dust!

That’s enough to seriously cover the cost of the new iPhone 4 and a few months of line rental depending on what price plan you select.

So when you’re in the mood to clear out your gadget closet, do check out the Mobile Phone Recycling Comparison site and see what you could earn.

Two new phones will be unveiled by Motorola at this year’s CES, one of which is the very first handset to be made from water bottles.

Known as the MOTO W233 Renew, it’s an environmentally conscious phone in more ways than just one. As it’s all been designed and laid out in such a way that it’s even earned itself a Carbonfund.org CarbonFree product certification.

First up is the Renew’s casing, in which it’s comprised of plastics made from recycled water bottles where there’s 20-percent less energy used in going into its making. Not only that, but it’s also 100-perecent recyclable in itself highlighting that its future has been taken into account. And just to hammer home how Green it is, Motorola has even coloured the phone’s casing green. How very subtle!

If all that wasn’t enough and why should it be with the planet being in the danger it’s in, the Renew is also supposed to be the world’s first carbon neutral mobile. How this is achieved is through a partnership with Carbonfund.org. Where Motorola has offset the carbon dioxide used in the manufacturing, distribution and operations of the phone. Moto has made investments via that very same company in both reforestation and also renewable energy resources, which aided in achieving a CarbonFree product certification.

They didn’t stop there either, as the packaging has now been said to be 22-pecent less in size over others which in turn cuts down on transportation. With all the materials used making up the box is now also printed on 100-percent recycled paper. They’ve also bundled in a postage paid recycling envelope, for sending off the existing phone the Renew has replaced solely for recycling.

Underneath all this greenness beats the heart of a GSM phone that boasts a 9 hour talk time, with 18 days of standby that comes in at 45 x 110.97 x 14.7 mm in size. There isn’t really anything outstanding about the phone apart from being very environmentally friendly, it’s more or less what you see is what you get.

MOTO Renew is expected to hit T-Mobile USA sometime in Q1 this year.

The second Mobile to be shown off in Las Vegas is the MOTOSURF A3100. This is a handset they’re calling a touch tablet, which just appears to be a wide-screen phone than the usual and that’s about it.

It’s running from Windows Mobile 6.1, with a full 2.8-inch QVGA touch screen operational from a stylus or its omni-directional trackball.

On board it’s a Quad band phone with 3G and HSDPA plus WIFI. It has all the trimmings possible for web surfing with Opera installed, playing MP3s from Windows Media Player and minor satnav with the likes of built-in aGPS.

When the A3100 arrives sometime in Q1, it will be available in Latin America and Asia.

Now, we’re not entirely sure if the Renew will ever see the light of day in the UK or main land Europe, for a couple of reasons too.

One, we weren’t contacted by Motorola over these mobiles being announced at CES. No email, no calls, no carrier pigeons – nothing whatsoever.

Two, we have been made aware that other journalists elsewhere in the world were pre-briefed under embargo on their arrival. Curiouser and Curiouser.

Both of which screams to us it’ll never be seen anywhere close to home, that along with any emails to Motorola today fell upon deaf ears surrounding the two handsets.

Let’s hope, for Al Gore’s sake the W223 isn’t the last of the Green practices surrounding a Motorola mobile phone, only just the very start.

We’d like to see all of them being produced in the very same way. In fact so much so, that we’ll look forward to the day that we’ll all be sick and tired of writing how Green a phone is, just as you will all be in reading it.

Here’s to the future and that we all have one.