What Happens When You Recycle Cell Phones?

It‘s only natural to wonder what’s going to happen when you recycle cell phones, right?

That phone sat in your pocket for so long, it’s like an old friend. Do they just dump them all into a big melting vat and turn them into park benches?  Or maybe they break them into tiny pieces and sell them off for parts, in some giant cell phone junkyard.

Actually, sometimes the truth is a little more interesting than fiction and that’s why all of our phones are wiped clean of your personal information before they’re redistributed. It’s part of the process of determining which phones are still usable and which ones we need to break down.

Keeping electronic waste out of landfills is one of the primary goals at SecondWave, so there’s no cell phone junkyard going on here. But then, you didn’t really like that idea anyway, right?  Phones that aren’t usable really can be broken down into usable parts and some used cell phones end up living a second life in some other form, which is really important because right now there are over 135,000,000 cell phones that end up in landfills every year, that’s a lot of toxic waste.

Luckily, most of the phones that are turned in for recycling are actually still usable.

The most exciting thing that happens when you recycle cell phones is that SecondWave donates money to the charity of your choice.  You can choose from one of the many nonprofit organizations we already work with or you can start a fundraiser of your own.

Does your kids’ soccer team need new uniforms? Is your school dance team raising money for summer camp? Is your church trying to build a new monument?  Recycling cell phones is a great way to raise money because chances are pretty high that everyone you know has a phone and, more importantly, they also have an old phone sitting in their desk drawer just waiting to be recycled. Contact us to start your fundraiser or use the links above to print yourand donate your phone today.

photo credit: blakespot via photopin cc