Did you know that cell phones contain such precious metals as silver, gold, platinum, copper, tin and zinc?
Just think, the next time someone smiles and displays a gold filling, s/he could be sporting some of your old recycle cell phone. However, we wouldn’t advise grabbing someone’s silver necklace or bracelet, because it could be made of something that was once yours. The copper washtub you just bought to cool the beer for a party? Isn’t déjà vu fascinating?
A lot goes into cell phones that most people don’t think about. Aside from precious ores, metals are used by many industries from jewelry to electronics to automotive. It is in the realm of possibility that a recycle cell phone part might be in a Jaguar, but the jury’s out on that. New cell phones are probably about 1/3 used or recycled parts such as plastics and metal framing. There are over 300,000,000 cell phone users in the U. S. alone, which means there are around a billion old cell phones lying about. Perhaps 10% get recycled, at the most!
Do you know what that means?
Somewhere someone doesn’t have a new Jaguar made of your old recycle cell phone.Seriously, that means that a landfill somewhere in New Jersey is ringing. That means the electronics are leaching radioactive gunk into the groundwater. Birds and animals, not to mention humans, are getting a taste of Ta-da when they take a drink of water. It means we are further poisoning the planet, because these things have a shelf life like you wouldn’t believe.
Recycle cell phone also means keeping those billion old phones from emitting more greenhouse gases. Recycling just one million of them would be the same as not having 1,300 cars snarling up traffic for one year. That’s a much better way of stopping traffic, wouldn’t you agree?
Humans aren’t the only critters endangered by unrecycled cell phones. Animals in a remote part of Africa are being wiped out by miners mining some of the ores that go into cell phones. The U. N. has discovered that in the past five years, the gorilla population has been depleted by 90% in the mining of these ores. It shouldn’t be angry birds being played on cell phones, it should be angry gorillas. Your recycle cell phone could put an end to the gorilla killing.
When you get the latest and greatest model of smartphone, contact us and let us donate your old phone to a worthy cause.
It would keep traffic from backing up and perhaps make a new copper washtub for another party.