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What To Do With Old Cell Phones?

Going green is a big topic these days across the various tech industries. My colleague Bob Evans has been blogging on the green theme in recent days. His posts got me to thinking about mobile phones and the green issues faced by the wireless industry. If you think recycling dead PCs is a big issue, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

T-Mobile UK estimates that in Great Britain alone, there are as many as "52.3 million mobile phones gathering dust in drawers and cupboards" across the country. That's literally tons of unused consumer electronics just sitting around, creating more waste.
The bigger issue with dead and old cell phones, though, is that consumers often forget about them (because unlike dead PCs, they don't take up as much space). But dead and old cell phones pose just as many risks as unused PCs and peripherals.

That's why T-Mobile UK is trying to encourage people to recycle their old cell phones:

The phones will either be refreshed and resold in emerging markets or broken down and recycled. In return, T-Mobile will give each customer, or a charity of their choice, up to £80 per phone.

This way the carriers make money -- by either recycling the old phone parts or refurbishing the devices and reselling them in emerging markets -- and users (or their charities) get to make some cash too. Kudos to T-Mobile UK for this program.

In the U.S. there are a number of places people can go to recycle their dead cell phones. One place, CollectiveGood, lets people recycle dead phones and then use the proceeds to benefit the charity of their choice.

Another organization, ReCellular, works with the CTIA to recycle and refurbish dead phones. Like CollectiveGood, ReCellular helps charities with the proceeds.

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