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Strategies: Cell Phone Recycling: It's About More Than Just Money
By Conrad Melancon
Most of the time I use this space to talk about recycling cell phones for profit and different strategies you can use to find phones, etc… Looking over past articles and thinking about the big picture, I realized that I really have not covered the other reason to collect cell phones and recycle them – to help protect the environment.
When the first cell phones hit the market a little more than 20 years ago, no one envisioned the impact they would have on today’s society and how we look at communicating with each other. As with every great invention that is properly marketed and widely accepted by the public there is always a price to pay as the number of users increase. In this instance we now have more cell phone lines in America than we do landlines.
Here are some fast facts about cell phone usage and some of the environmental hazards of improper disposal:
- In the US, there are approximately 208 million cellular phones currently in use.
- The average American cell phone user owns 3 or more cell phones.
- The average U.S. consumer only uses their current cell phone for 12 to 18 months.
- It is estimated that 130 million cell phones will become obsolete and discarded each year and by 2006 over 600 million cell phones will be stockpiled in US homes.
- Improper disposal of cell phones and their batteries can generate up to 65,000 tons of potentially hazardous wastes each year.
- The circuit boards in cell phones contain myriad toxins such as arsenic, antimony, beryllium, cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, and zinc.
- Brominated flame retardants are found in the plastic housing, printed wiring board, and cables.
- The lithium-ion and nickel-metal hydride batteries contain heavy metals such as cobalt, zinc, and copper.
- Many of these chemicals are Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxins (PBTs) and have the potential to be released into the air and groundwater when burned in incinerators or disposed of in landfills, thus creating unnecessary threats to human health and the environment.
- Over 70% of Americans do not know that they can recycle their old cell phone.
- Less than 5% of obsolete cell phones are refurbished or recycled.
- In a recent survey, only 2.3% of Americans recycled their old cell phones and 7% threw them in the garbage.
What do all the numbers above mean for you, the collector? If you are looking for a business opportunity that has extremely low start-up costs, low overhead, plenty of available product, a huge potential to make money, and will help the environment - then this may be the perfect business for you!
Conrad
Melancon is the President of RMS
Communications Group, Inc. He
joined the company in November
of 2004 as the Director of
Business Development and assumed
his current position in December
of last year.
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