There are several ways you can deal with an old cell phone to help yourself and the environment
We recently got a new cell phone for Steph. When the package arrived in the mail, we tore into it to set up the cell phone and see what it could do. After all of the excitement passed though, we were left staring at her old cell phone, wondering what to do with it.
Chances are that you have had this experience as well. The United States has over 200 million cell phone subscribers and 80% of them upgrade their devices every eighteen months. 80% of those 200 million also do not know what to do with their old cell phones. Seth Heine, founder and CEO of CollectiveGood/RipMobile (now FlipSwap), estimates there are 750 million used cell phones floating around the United States, most of which end up in a drawer or a landfill. In fact, Californians throw away 44,000 cell phones every day.
Throwing an old cell phone in the trash is the worst possible way to dispose of it, as cell phones contain several toxic chemicals that leach into the soil when they are put into a landfill. Also, today’s modern cell phones store a lot of data about you. Unless you explicitly wipe all of the data off of your old cell phone, anyone who gets their hands on it has access to all of your personal data.
So, when you upgrade a cell phone, what is the best thing to do with your old one to both help yourself and the environment? Luckily, there are several good options available to you.
Read more on What to do with an Old Cell Phone…
Filed under Waste and Recycling by . 
The Best Buy TV recycling program helps dispose of old TV's properly
Our old projection LCD TV stopped working a while ago. It wasn’t that old, so we looked into getting it fixed, but the repair was going to cost almost as much as buying a new television. We did not want to just throw the old TV in the trash though, so we spent some time looking into local recycling options. Unfortunately, neither our county nor any adjacent ones offered TV recycling. Read more on Best Buy TV Recycling Program…
Filed under Waste and Recycling by .
Computer memory recycling can keep old memory like this out of the trash
Recently, I found my laptop running really slowly whenever I had several large applications open at the same time. I figured it may be because my laptop did not have enough memory, so I started looking to see if I could upgrade the memory in my particular laptop. A few quick Google searches showed me that I could and that it would only cost me around $15 to upgrade. I was sold, so I ordered a new stick of RAM memory.
When the memory arrived, I popped open my laptop and installed it and it worked beautifully. However, I now had a stick of memory that I no longer needed and I had no idea what to do with it. Read more on Trade in Memory…
Filed under Waste and Recycling by .
