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Earth Month is chock-full of ways to help the planet, and one way is as easy as uncovering that cell phone sitting in the back of the junk drawer and sending it in for recycling.
During the week of April 6-12, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is pushing people to send in their cell phones, and has teamed up with AT&T, Best Buy, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, Office Depot, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Sprint, Staples, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless for the drive.
You can contact the local retailer, or Earth911.org to find out where to submit your used cell phone and avoid it becoming e-waste. And if you are wondering why you should bother moving a cell phone from a drawer to a recycling facility, here's why:
Recycling cell phones can save enough energy to power more than 2,035 U.S. households for a year. Recycling the 100 million cell phones that are no longer used annually would save enough energy to power more than 18,000 households for a year. Currently, only about 10 percent of unwanted cell phones are recycled each year.
From the EPA.
There are lots of resources available on easy ways to recycle or donate your old cell phone—even how to prep it to send in—so if you've been putting it off, now is the time to do a little e-waste spring cleaning!
