There is no reason in the world to explain why you’re not trading in your old cell phone. Accumulating old phones, which could be refurbished and resold or simply taken apart for materials, is a hoarding approach that doesn’t benefit anyone. But there are some myths out there that prevent people from trading them in even though they’d like to. Let’s dismantle those now.

“My personal data could still be on the phone.”

When you delete information off a hard drive, you’re usually not actually deleting anything. In fact, what you’re doing is deleting the part of your data that tells the computer where the data is stored. But does it ever get deleted? No – it gets overwritten. The easiest way to completely cleanse a phone’s hard drive is to overwrite it with nonsense data – not a difficult task, just a time-consuming one. Do it once, and it’s fairly safe. Do it five times, and it’s very safe. Do it thirty-seven times, and even the government won’t be able to retrieve your old GMail password.

“My phone’s probably worth nothing at this point.”

Cell and smartphones are always worth something. Each of them can either be resold or used for parts. There are a lot of good opportunities, like your local phone shop or try services like O2 Recycle, and you can generally get some money back to either put towards a new phone or something else entirely. Selling your handset doesn’t have to mean settling for almost no money, and if you’re someone who trades up annually, you’re looking at a pretty big windfall.

“It’s too much effort.”

No, it isn’t. Pop it in some packaging (some companies will even send you this), then put it in a post box. There’s nothing complex about it at all. The issue with recycling your phone is only that you have to ensure you’ve cleared it of personal data, copied that data to a safe device in the first place, and have the ability to walk to a post box. It’s as simple as can be, short of someone coming to your house and doing it all for you, and on average it’ll take a good chunk out of the cost of your new phone. Job done, money earned, myths busted.