Cell Phone Experiments

Cell phones are a part of every day life. They are imbedded in American culture, and I doubt they'll be going away any time soon. That's why, for my project, I researched proper cell phone disposal. If you just throw your cell phone away in the garbage, it could end up in a landfill where it could do some damage.

There are a lot of chemicals in your phone, some of them are hazardous, some are not. Before you start to debate how much you use your cell phone, don't worry; none of those hazardous materials will get to you unless you leave the phone sit in the sun for something like 5 entire months straight. It's not designed to leak out, but as the materials covering the phone break away, they will. This can take years, but it does happen, and materials such as cadmium--the main component of your phone's battery--leak into soil and water, which can cause health problems for those living nearby.

The three experiments I ran were simple. I went to various stores and: A. Asked if they recycled cell phones, B. Discovered if they brought it up when buying a new cell phone, and C. Asked random people on the street what they did with their previous phone. The results I got were pretty straight forward. For A, most places do, except for Wal-Mart of all things (even though it is listed as accepting old phones!). For B, the only place that bothered was Radio Shack, and I think that's because the employee just thought to do it--he was not trained to. For C, almost half the people I talked to simply threw old phones in the garbage. Yikes.

I won't get into the boring statistics (they are there, but I'll probably be going over them during the presentation anyway), but for the most part, only 1% of cell phones get recycled. The rest are either kept or thrown away. That is a lot of phones, and a lot of hazardous material.

So, next time you go to buy a cell phone, remember to donate your old one, or hell, even give it to an old friend. It's as simple as walking into the store and giving it back. Will you be compensated for it? Err...well, no. Not unless it's worth something (i.e., a recent smart phone). But you won't be damaging the earth, and plus the materials within the phone can be reused to make new ones instead of being wasted. Pretty good, right?

Next Time: Something about Wall-E. That adorable little scamp.