Mobile phone providers are leaving too much responsibility to consumers and not doing enough to encourage them to recycle mobile phones, Greenpeace has said.

The campaign group is now calling on the mobile phone industry to take more responsibility for the thousands of phones given to consumers each year as part of subscriptions to services.

The call comes as research by T-Mobile and Mori Ipsos found the UK's 37 million mobile phone owners have an average of 1.39 old phones hidden away. This adss up to an estimated 52.3 million handsets that are currently lying around unused. With each redundant handset worth an average of £22.40, the mobile phone provider has estimated that the overall value of unused phones is £1.1bn.

In response to the findings T-Mobile has launched a mobile phone recycling scheme where anyone, regardless of network, can return their old mobile via a freepost bag, picked up from a T-Mobile store. T-Mobile customers will also receive one automatically when they buy a new phone. On sending back their phones, customers will be given up to £80, which they can also opt to give to a charity.

Greenpeace, however, criticised this initiative, which it said put the responsibility of recycling “too much onto consumer’s shoulders.”

Zeina Alhajj, a representative for the group, said: “The responsibility of recycling lies ultimately with the manufacturers, which constantly give out free upgrades to boost business.

“Instead of giving consumers freepost bags and cash-back incentives, mobile phone providers must begin to offer a service that allows users to walk into a shop and swap their handset for money off a line rental service or for a new phone.”

The Environment Agency agreed that the responsibility fell with mobile phone providers. It referred to the recent WEEE directive, which dictates from July this year mobile phones must be reused and recycled in a responsible and compliant way.

A representative for the organisation told Computeractive: “The directive doesn’t require consumers to do anything with their old mobile phones. However, retailers such as T-Mobile and Three are required by the law to offer a like for like take-back scheme for consumers and they must clearly highlight that.”

When contacted by Computeractive,the UK’s mobile phone providers including Three, Vodafone and Virgin all said they offered similar freepost schemes to that proposed by T-Mobile through a company called Fonebak.

However, these schemes are not communicated to customers as fully as they could be with some providers putting the schemes on their websites for people to find. Virgin mobile told Computeractive: “We advertise our recycling scheme in our literature and customers can obtain a recycling envelope via our call centre, our website or a Virgin Megastore.”

As a result Greenpeace hopes that the T-Mobile campaign could have more of an impact on awareness of the availability of these schemes.

“Until mobile providers can offer a better level of recycling they must continue to communicate and educate consumers on the importance of recycling and the schemes they have available," said Alhajj.

People wishing to recycle their mobile phones can also contact independent mobile phone recycling companies such as Mopay or Envirofone which give users the opportunity to register their old phones online to obtain a price for their phone before sending them in.