How many do you have lurking in your closet? Your desk? Your junk drawer?
I’m talking about cell phones.
We are inseparable from our cell phones…until the latest and greatest model comes out. Then, we kick the old ones to the curb. “Someday,” you think, “I’ll get around to recycling it.”
The Environmental Protection Agency wants you to know that “someday” is here – and it’s here for a week. The EPA is asking us to recycle our cell phones during the second annual National Cell Phone Recycling Week, April 5 – 11, 2010.
Currently, only about 10 percent of cell phones are recycled. Americans toss 130 million cell phones each year! Each year! If we recycled them, we’d save enough energy to power more than 24,000 homes in a year.
And, if that’s not enough…for every 1 million cell phones recycled, the following can be recovered:
- 75 pounds of gold
- 772 pounds of silver
- 33 pounds of palladium
- 35,274 pounds of copper
Now, multiple those numbers by 130 to reach the 130 million that we toss. Recovering these metals means less mining, less social injustice, less manufacturing leading to less pollution and less depletion of resources.
And, if none of that motivates you, think of this. You’ll reclaim the space in your closet, your desk, or your junk drawer!
- Find a cell phone collection location near you, here at EPA.gov
- Listen to the EPA podcast on this topic
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Recycling your old mobile phones can be beneficial for others even for you for you can recycle it in exchange for cash at the same time you can help lessen the continuous growth of e-waste.