This is not the first time I'm looking at how discarded PCs or other electronic devices can affect our environment. (Check "Why tech pollution's going global" or "Cleaning Up Clean Rooms: It seems pristine, but making microchips is a filthy business" for example.)
Today, we'll look specifically at what we can do of our *old* cell phones. As you all know, they contain plastics and metals and some older varieties can have hazardous nickel-cadmium batteries. Henry Norr wrote an article about this problem.
By 2005, 130 million mobile phones will go out of service annually in the United States, and the accumulated stockpile building up in our closets and drawers will have grown to more than 500 million, according to estimates in Bette K. Fishbein's "Waste in the Wireless World: The Challenge of Cell Phones," an exhaustive study of the problem published last June by Inform, a nonprofit environmental research organization with offices on -- of all places -- Wall Street. (You can download the whole 109-page opus, in chapters, from www.informinc.org/wirelesswaste.php.)
If thrown in the trash, 130 million phones would be far less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the 240 million tons of municipal solid waste Americans are expected to generate in 2005.
But even if they're a drop in the bucket, it's a nasty drop. Like computers and other electronic devices, mobile phones contain a long list of toxic materials including lead, cadmium, beryllium and arsenic.
In addition, because the plastics used in phones are highly flammable, flame retardants are typically added to reduce the danger of combustion. Often they're of a type called brominated flame retardants, which are increasingly suspected of contributing to a variety of serious health problems, including cancer, neurological damage, immune-system problems and endocrine disruption.
But there is another solution. Instead of throwing away these phones, you can give them to people who need them, for instance in other countries. The article gives a list of some organizations which will redistribute your old -- but perfectly working -- phones.
Even if you don't want to give your old mobile phone, some help might come from the vendors.
In "Phone Makers to Help Dispose of Old Handsets," Stephanie Nebehay reports from Geneva that "Electronics industry giants pledged on Thursday to help ensure the hundreds of millions of mobile phones that enter the market each year are disposed of in an environmentally-sound way when their life ends."
Nokia, Motorola, Philips and Samsung are among the ten makers who signed the agreement. So I guess there's some hope for our environment -- even if you don't give away your phone.
Sources: Henry Norr, San Francisco Chronicle, December 9, 2002; Stephanie Nebehay, Reuters, December 12, 2002
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