About Mobile Phone Recycling: A Mobile Battery can Pollute 600,000 litres of Water

I do not know the exact number of cell phones used in the world today but I know that the number is more than 1 billion. Soon, mobile phone will overtake almost every gadget in the world in terms of number. And then, millions of people are changing their sets after every 2-3 years. Thus, every year, millions of mobile phone sets will get dumped from now on. That’s an environmental nightmare. Just imagine- 100 million cell phone sets getting dumped in landfills! Scary, isn’t it? Well according to Envirofone.com ‘Each year, over 100 million mobile phones are thrown away in Europe.’ Fortunately, the idea of recycling cell phones is getting more attention these days- not as much as I expected but still not bad.

I really liked the effort of Envirofone.com to recycle old phone sets. This organization is helping the mobile phone users in UK and Republic of Ireland. Soon, it is going to operate in The Netherlands. The best part is that it pays some money to the users who are giving away their cell phone sets. Also, whenever a user gives them a cell phone set, Envirofone donates a little amount of money to a charity. This is really a cool idea. I wish that every country in Europe and America could follow this model.

Some charity organizations like Oxfam are helping people to recycle their old cell phone sets. For example, in UK, Oxfam encourages people to donate their old phone sets. Oxfam then gives the sets to the companies that are involved with recycling mobile phone sets. I found similar effort in Australia by another organization.

Recycling mobile phone is perhaps an easier matter in poor countries. In many parts of Asia and Africa, poor and lower middle class consumers often cannot afford a new cell phone set and buy used sets. So, I guess American and European NGOs can send the poor countries some old phone sets.

Why should you bother for recycling your old cell phone set? Well, here is one reason stated by Oxfam:

This is important because mobile phones are made of plastic, precious metals and some toxic materials which could cause serious damage to the environment if they were to end up in a landfill site. For example, one mobile battery could be powerful enough to pollute 600,000 litres of water!

Wow, one battery of a mobile phone can actually pollute such a huge quantity of water. So, better help organizations like Oxfam instead of not bothering about this matter.
Are you listening?