Recycle a Phone with That Battery!
As of 2011, the average American upgrades their cell phone about
every two years, whereas folks in Finland, Brazil, and India upgrade at an
average of every 6-8 years. Where do the batteries from all of these unwanted phones
go? According to the EPA, only 8% of cell phones were recycled in
2009, which means that a lot of them are probably sitting around collecting dust or have made their way to the landfill. I am guessing that this probably
means that many of the batteries weren't recycled either.
Cell phone batteries are typically one of four types: Lithium
Polymer (Li-Poly), Lithium Ion (Li-Ion), Nickel Cadmium (NiCd), or Nickel Metal
Hydride (NiMH). NiCd is the most toxic to the environment due to its cadmium
content and should never reach the landfill, but all of them contain valuable materials that can be recycled
and reused. This is true not only for the cell phone battery, but for other components as well. Cell phones contain many other materials that can be costly or
are of limited supply such as gold, silver, copper, zinc, lead, iron, and
platinum. In 2009, 62 percent of recycled cell phones were turned into sources
of material recovery and the remaining 38 percent were reused or refurbished.
Many cell phone carriers also have trade-in or donation
programs that can benefit the customer or a social service such as AT&T’s Trade-In-Program,
Verizon Wireless’ HopeLine program, Sprint Nextel’s Project Connect, and
T-Mobile USA’s Handset Recycling Program. Each of these carriers make it easy
to recycle… either drop off your old phone at a service provider location or ship
it by going to a provider’s website and printing out a free ship label for your
region (T-Mobile has the envelopes at store locations). Any of these
organizations will take any make or model of cell phone. You can also try to be aware of organization sponsored cell-phone recycling drives and drop-off
locations because many organizations now participate in the recycling effort.
Resources:
http://www.t-mobile.com/Company/Community.aspx?tp=Abt_Tab_PhoneRecyclingProgram&tsp=Abt_Sub_PhoneRecyclingProgram
Image: http://www.howstuffworks.com/enlarge-image.htm?terms=inside+of+cell+phone&page=7
Image: http://www.howstuffworks.com/enlarge-image.htm?terms=inside+of+cell+phone&page=7
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