Photo by Kensie Wallner

GreenCell Recycling

By Anthony Pilloud
Contributing Writer

Your old cell phones are 100% recyclable. And yet, barely 10% of the nation’s cells phone are being brought to the proper avenues for recycling. And with an estimated 178 million used cell phones being retired in the United States each year, I’ll simply let you do the math on how that stacks up. So what is it that prevents so many people from simply digging into their junk drawers, unearthing their two-to-four year old cellular devices and dropping them off at the designated recycling bin? The obvious answer is simple: it is not very convenient to find such a place; let’s be honest, going green is hard work, and America is awfully lazy.

Thanks to GreenCell Recycling, this is no longer the case. GreenCell is a very recent organization (beginning only this April) that is dedicated to bringing swift and efficient recycling convenience to the Fargo/Moorhead area. By donating your used cellular devices, they can be either broken down to remove the important and valuable components, refurbished with other parts to simply make the phone usable again for resale or donation to another country, or, if nothing is directly wrong with it, sent right back to the market. GreenCell Recycling ensures that no phones donated in such a manner will ever reach a landfill.

GreenCell Recycling, spearheaded by Dan and Steve Hicks, has recently began the “FM50K”, an effort to collect upwards of 50,000 used, old, and obsolete cell phones for recycling before they make it to the garbage and landfills. By working with local businesses and organizations, it’s now as simple as putting your old phone into a Ziploc bag and depositing it into one of their conveniently located bins. Locations include any Hornbacher’s in the Fargo/Moorhead area, The Plains Art Museum, Hjemkomst Center, Dorothy Day and the Red River Boys and Girls Youth Ranch.

GreenCell is supplying everything necessary – bins, pamphlets, letters, and collection of the phones. The organizations they are working with simply need to allow the bins to be placed in their buildings.

GreenCell works alongside both local and national charities to assist in raising money that comes with recycling these used electronic devices. These include The American Cancer Society, Relay for Life, and the Dorothy Day house, to name a few. Cell phone recycling is becoming increasingly important with every passing day.

As technology steadily evolves, Americans rarely keep the same cellular device for longer than a year and a half.  Not to mention that cell phones are classified as hazardous waste by the Environmental Protection Agency due to their trace amounts of lead, mercury, nickel, and even arsenic and cadmium. However, cell phones also contain several precious metals such as gold, silver, and platinum, all of which can recovered (not to mention the copper in the chargers). There is enough gold in two hundred cell phones to make a single gold ring.  Also, recycling cell phones is tax deductible – so really there is no excuse to not to do it.

And so we clearly see the importance of GreenCell Recycling’s FM50k goal. Collecting 50,000 cell phones is only one phone for every four people. So dig deep into those junk drawers, look behind the old books on your shelves, collect those old, unused electronic devices (GreenCell will also collect your iPods, MP3 Players, digital cameras, blue tooth devices, and GPS units) and donate them for recycling. All you need to do is ensure that its service is deactivated and drop it off at a participating box. Simple, fast, efficient. And most importantly for us, convenient.
How many phones have you gone through?

Questions and comments: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

For further information visit: http://www.gcellrecycling.com or email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

You can also contact Dan Hicks at 701-793-6356 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)