Whether you’re Nokia 3310 or iPhone 16, try winning a BalĂ©lec festival ticket or a gift basket! Participate in the 3rd edition of the “Old but Gold” contest from November 24 to December 8, 2025. Prizes will be awarded at noon on December 11 at the Advent Chalets.
Special Offer! For this third edition, Old But Gold has teamed up with Point Smart to offer the first 200 people who sign up a discounted protective case (CHF 7) and/or screen protector (CHF 3) for their phone! Don’t wait any longer, sign up now here.
Did you know that there is 50 to 400 times more gold in a ton of electronic waste than in a ton of gold ore?
Up to 70 different materials and 50 different metals are present in a smartphone, including precious metals such as gold and silver, and rare-earth elements such as tantalum, palladium, neodymium and others.
However, of all the materials used in our cell phones, only around twenty can be recycled today. And only a tiny part of it is actually recycled.
Knowing that the manufacture of a smartphone accounts for 80% of its environmental footprint, depleting and polluting the soil and water of increasingly vast regions, extending the life of this equipment and avoiding buying a new one are the best ways of reducing this impact.
This year, instead of buying a brand-new cell phone during Black Friday or asking for one for Christmas, what if you decided to keep your good old phone?
Enter our competition and win Balelec festival tickets and gift baskets by answering a few questions. Everyone has a chance of winning, but the older your phone, the greater your chances of being drawn! Three draws will be reserved for the ten oldest handsets. Four more will be reserved for phones that are at least four years old. An additional draw will be made from all those who complete the questionnaire. Finally, there’s still a chance to win prizes in games organized on the day of the prize-giving ceremony.
To be considered âvalidâ, the cell phone must be functional and be the primary phone used by the participant.
Prizes will be awarded at noon on December 11 at the AGEPoly Advent Chalets on the Esplanade.
I PARTICIPATE
Rules of the contest is available here.
Answers due by December 8, 2025.
Contest reserved for the entire EPFL community with an @epfl.ch e-mail address. Only one entry per person authorized. The data collected will be anonymized after the competition and used for research into responsible digital use at EPFL.
The age of the smartphone will be verified by the Point Smart team, who will also check that the device has been used regularly up to now.
Long live our mobile phones!
And if you still have to part with your old smartphone…
Find out more about the local refurbishing and recycling optimization association NoOPS (No Obsolescence Programmée Suisse), and watch out for other sites and projects that offer to take back your device without being transparent about the route it will take.