The days of stuffing unwanted mobile phone chargers into a drawer are numbered — the mobile phone industry has agreed to provide universal chargers designed to work on any handset.

The global trade group for the mobile industry announced the plan at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona yesterday as a number of companies launched "green phones" in an effort to counter the image of mobiles as environmentally unfriendly.

Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG have all agreed to provide universal chargers, which use 50 per cent less energy than current models.

Handsets will start shipping with the device from June. The GSM Association (GSMA) hopes that by 2012 the majority of handsets will come with the charger.

"We aim to reduce greenhouse gases by 2012 by 13.6 million tonnes," Michael O'Hara, of the GSMA, said. "It's a cool environmental measure which is also very convenient for customers. You won't have to go around any more asking if anyone has a charger. They'll all be the same."

Mr O'Hara said that a potential 51,000 tonnes of duplicate chargers could be saved through the process. Companies would eventually stop shipping chargers altogether, he said, relying instead on customers to have saved their previous device.

The charger will work through a micro-USB connection, similar to the ones used on the latest BlackBerry smartphones. All five of the UK's mobile companies have signed up to the plan.

Campaigners have voiced increasing concerns about the environmental impact caused by mobile phones.

At this year's show, Samsung unveiled its Blue Earth phone, which is made out of recycled water bottles. The phone features an in built pedometer, which claims to measure how many trees its user has saved by walking rather than talking a car.

An estimated 1.2 billion mobile phones were sold in 2008, of which between 50 per cent and 80 per cent were replacement handsets. That equals between 51,000 tonnes and 82,000 tonnes of replacement chargers every year.

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