Mobile phones left behind on trains are being recycled to raise life saving funds.

Thames Valley and Chiltern Air Ambulance Trust will benefit from a donation of mobile phones from the lost property of South West Trains.

Every phone donated can raise about �1 through recycling for the Ambulance Trust - that will go towards the �100 it costs for an hour's fuel for the air ambulance.

Stevie Horton, the trust's fundraising manager, said: "We appreciate this donation of mobile phones from South West Trains.

"The money we receive from recycling will help us to carry on saving lives and is obviously also a very environmentally friendly way of disposing of these unclaimed phones."

Since the Air Ambulance began in 1999 it has answered more than 1,600 emergency calls across Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.

Janet Archer, South West Train's group station manager at Waterloo, said: "These unwanted phones will now be put to good use and will help to raise funds for a service which save lives on part of the area served by South West Trains."

About 165 mobile phones a month are handed into South West Trains' lost property and are kept for three months, but only about a third are claimed.