Recycling Your Old Cell Phones

In several months or years, you’ll rediscover them. By then, the phones will seem worthless to you, so you’ll probably discard them and subsequently, the phones will end up in the local landfill.
How do you recycle cell phones?
Passing your old phones on to family or friends is the simplest method of recycling. The majority of the phones we discard for an updated model or after switching service providers remain completely usable and functional. If you give it to a friend or family member, you’ll be sure that the phone will have an additional year or two of use. However, this merely stretches out the phone’s life cycle. You can help the environment by telling the person receiving the phone to recycle it properly when the time comes.
Mobile Phone Recycling - The Facts
It is estimated that there are currently fifty million mobile phone subscribers in the UK, the average mobile phone user will upgrade once every eighteen months, twenty million phones are upgraded every eighteen months in the UK alone. Only 20% of mobiles in the UK are ever re-used or recycled which means that close to one hundred million phones are stored in people’s cupboards, drawers and attics collecting dust. If these phones were all piled up on top of each other they would weigh six times heavier than the London Eye!
Learn How To Get Rid Of Old Cell Phones
On average, most people replace their phones every 18 months to 2 years. Considering how many cell phone users there are in the world, that’s quite a few phones just laying around not being used anymore! Whether they are broken or not, the old phones wind up in a box somewhere in the basement, completely forgotten and never to be used again.
Not only is this a waste of space, but in many cases old phones and old batteries can be hazardous to the environment if left lying around. Because they are harmful, they cannot be disposed of like the rest of our garbage. So what can we do with our old phones?
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Recycle Your Phone - Law Says You HAVE To
Mobile Phone Clamp Down - Recycling Becoming Mandatory
Mobile Phone Clamp Down - Recycling Becoming Mandatory by Rick Hendershot
Westchester County in New York will soon be one of the first places in the U.S. to require consumers to recycle their old cell phones. The legislation will be backed up by fines of up to $250 for people caught trashing their old phones.
Jurisdictions across the country have been wrestling with the problem of outdated phones ending up in landfills and being burned in incinerators. The phones contain harmful chemicals and heavy metals like arsenic, zinc, copper and lead.
Many areas of the country have voluntary recycling programs. Most put the onus on cell phone retailers to recycle phones when new ones are purchased. But the New York county law is one of the first that makes it mandatory for consumers to recycle their old phones — and backs it up with fines.
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Why Recycle Your Phone
Recycle cell phones? Absolutely!
Did you know that you can actually recycle your old or used cell phones? If you’re like most people, you probably have one or two hidden in a drawer somewhere. In a few months or years, you’ll rediscover these hidden phones and having no further use to you, these old units will most likely end up in your garbage bin and thence, in your city’s landfill.
But there’s a better, more environmentally-responsible, even more profitable way to dispose of your old mobile phones. Cell phone recycling is the answer.
There may be around 700 million used or old cellular phones in America today, with approximately 125 million discarded handsets added every year. According to a study done by a market intelligence firm iSuppli Corporation in 2007, 36.8 percent stored their phones in their drawers, 10.2 percent threw them away or declared these as lost or stolen, and only 9.4 percent recycled their used or old phones. In actual numbers, that’s 10 million old mobile phones rotting away in our country’s landfills and 37 million more gathering dust in the drawers of America - and that’s from 2007 alone!
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