Recycle That Old Cell Phone - Help Save The Environment

As the number of people using cell phones rises, it isn’t hard to see how many old phones get left unused as subscribers upgrade to newer mobile phones.

The question is, what should you do with your old cell phone? Leave it an a drawer forgotten? Toss it in the trash can?

The answer is: Recycle it!

Cell phones contain all kinds of dangerous chemicals that can pollute landfills and eventually seep in to the ground and possibly contaminate our drinking water.

”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 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 currently offers drop off centers in 30 states, mostly located at zoos throughout the US.

To find out more about Eco-cell’s mobile phone recycling program, please visit their website or donate your old phone to a soldier.

The planet will thank you!