Raise your hand if you have a drawer filled with old cell phones just waiting to be responsibly recycled. Keep your hand up if most of those phones have been in the drawer for over a year. Of the 160 million cell phones discarded annually, 75 percent of them end up in drawers or trash cans. A new company, Cycled Cells, takes in old cell phones, sometimes paying for them, and either recycles the phones or, if they can be rehabilitated, distributes them to phone-needy people around the world. They even pay for postage. [%comments]
Cash for Cells
TAGS: recycling, Technology
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In the UK we have had this sort of thing for quite a while. It really is brilliant.
I just sold my old NOKIA n95 when my contract finished for around £100. Much easier than messing about with eBay. They don’t require the charger, box, instructions, sim card etc, just the phone and the battery!
Wow! Finally they catch up!
There are shops all over India (all cities and towns) that will pick up your cell phone for a price, fix it and resell it at a price.
Its been happening for ages and not just with phones. It happens with even newspapers and polythene bags.
I guess people in the South just know that recycling makes economic sense and need not necessarily come with a halo of charity. I guess the environment is seamlessly integrated into the psyche of the people.
or, you can drop them off at your local Staples store for recycling which is what I do. Although, I’m not sure if they actually recycle or end up dumping to third world countries…
US in mobile phone catchup shocker
@jbr – Wouldn’t “dumping to third world countries” be even better than recycling it? In fact, it’s the ultimate recycling.
In Spain the red cross made a huge advertising campaign last year and asked people to donate their old mobile phones.
Here is the link
http://www.donatumovil.org/
— sygyzy
“@jbr – Wouldn’t “dumping to third world countries” be even better than recycling it? In fact, it’s the ultimate recycling.”
-No. Many times 3rd world countries don’t have the resources to responsibly recycle these devices when they are truly at the end of their useful life. The end result could be just adding it to an unregulated landfill.
If the old phone is being refurbished and provided to others for use, it seems like a perfect form of recycling. What one needs to appreciate, however, is that these rehabilitated phones might have a small useful life remaining. They will, in many instances, be discarded after being used for a small period of time and then add to e-waste of that third-world country.
Though the costs of disposal of such waste will be lower in the developing country as compared to a developed country, more often than not, the developing country would not have enough resources to spare. If Cycled Cells intends to be truly green they must invest some money in waste disposal projects in the developing countries for each cell phone it sends to that country.