Don't dump that old cell phone of yours
By Christa Ritchie
(Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal
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If you just bought an iPhone or you've upgraded to a flashier model, don't toss your old cell phone in the trash just yet. What you don't want, others do.
"Cell phones are small ... but inside that cell phone is lead, arsenic, cadmium — you name it," says Eric Ronay, president of Eco-Cell, a Louisville, Ky.-based national cell-phone recycling company. "It's incredible how something seemingly as innocuous as a cell phone can have such an extreme impact."
That's why several companies, including Eco-Cell, are on a mission to keep cell phones out of landfills where they will disintegrate and the battery and other dangerous substances will be exposed to the soil and groundwater.
"Then you have a nice environmental disaster," Ronay says.
Only a few states have cell-phone recycling programs, which means there's "a whole bunch of people that don't have any opportunities available to them to recycle their old cell phones," Ronay says. "It's estimated there's somewhere between 500 (million) and 700 million cell phones in the United States that were in people's drawers because they got new cell phones."
Eco-Cell has drop-off centers in zoos through 30 of the 50 states. The company collects the phones and sells them to a third party in the United States or overseas to be refurbished. Those that are too outdated to be reused are sent to Eco-Cell's partner company in Belgium called Umicore, where phones are recycled for their precious metals, including gold and silver, according to Ronay.
Eco-Cell pays up to $15 per working donated phone to participating zoos and other groups. "We get every imaginable phone you can think of," Ronay says. "We haven't seen an iPhone (which came out last month) yet, but we will."
Louisville Zoo assistant director Mark Zoeller said cell-phone recycling has really taken off at the animal haven. "Since Aug. 28, 2003, the zoo has raised $9,688 through Eco-Cell."
Other collecting programs:
"There are all these old phones out there that are perfectly capable of still making calls, and we thought it would be a great idea to put them to good use," says Michelle Gilbert, public relations manager for Verizon Wireless' Michigan/Indiana/Kentucky region.
People can drop off their phone at any Verizon location, and the phones that can be refurbished are sold for recycling. Those that have no value are disposed of in an environmentally friendly way.
Proceeds from the recycling are used to provide phones and cash grants for victims of domestic violence. It's called the HopeLine cell-phone recycling program.
"It doesn't matter how old your phone is. It doesn't matter who your carrier is," Gilbert says. "More than 4 million phones have been collected nationally since 2001."
AT&T wireless stores serve as drop-off points for the charity, which was started by two Massachusetts teenagers. Proceeds from the recycled phones will be used to purchase prepaid phone cards for military families.
"It's been very successful," says Cathy Lewandowski, AT&T market manager for Tennessee and Kentucky. AT&T has donated more than 30,000 prepaid phone cards.
Before you toss that phone
Before dropping off your old wireless phone to be recycled, erase all stored information, including your phonebook, text messages and incoming and outgoing phone numbers.
If you decide to give your old cell phone to a child to play with, be aware that inactive phones can still call 911. "That's an FCC mandate," says Michelle Gilbert, public relations manager for Verizon Wireless. She recommends parents remove the battery if they are going to let their child play with an old phone.
