Humans are odd animals. There seems to be an innate need to believe things in black and white, rather than shades of grey. And the current belief is that Climate Change is now happening and we must all DO OUR BIT. If you ask most people about the actual evidence, they point to random and statistically meaningless stuff like the lack of snow in the Alps this year (despite record levels last year) or a spate of recent dry summers.
Anyway, despite finding this need to believe a¬†curious phenomenon, I think it’s certainly a good thing that we take better care of our planet. And it also opens up loads of opportunities for entrepreneurs to help us all DO OUR BIT.
So, FlipSwap is timely indeed, helping us to allay our guilt about buying a new, expensive toy, when our old one is perfectly serviceable. And bringing in nice stuff about recycling, reusing and empowering poor people in the third world by making cheap phones available for them.
How it works is that you go into your local mobile phone store (assuming that they are in the FlipSwap programme – they claim “thousands” in the US) and hand your old phone to the sales person. He accesses the FlipSwap software, which gives you an instant valuation and if you agree, prints you out a voucher you can use towards buying your new phone.
FlipSwap provides the store with packaging and labels to make it easy to send in the phone. Then they resell, recycle safely or export it to the third world.
The average phone gets about $30, but can be as high as $300.
The beauty of this idea is that it just makes it easy for everyone. They do all the work and everyone else benefits without any hassle – and they get to feel good about themselves. Contrast this with Red, that I wrote about yesterday¬†and you’ll see why FlipSwap works and Red just doesn’t hack it on the execution front.
Anyway, very neat idea. Nice copy on the site too.
The only thing that would be nice would be a Store Locator, but since the website is primarily aimed at recruiting stores to their programme, it’s probably just a nice to have, at this stage.
So, go on – DO YOUR BIT for climate change. You know it makes sense, right?
—–>Follow us on Twitter too: @russellbuckley and @caaarlo
