Mobile phones quickly Becoming a toxic waste problem

[zekrahminator]

While we do focus on our computers a lot, most of us have something to remind us how much we love our technology while on the road: a cell phone. And this cell phone is turning into quite the issue. Driving distractions aside, cell phones do add one very negative effect to society: a huge pile of toxic waste. When people upgrade to the latest phone, they frequently throw away their old one. And these old cell phones contain such nasty chemicals as copper, nickel, antimony, and zinc. As time moves on, and phones decompose, the phone turns into a pile of toxic, hazardous mush. And when 700 million tiny piles of toxic mush make their way to the landfill, at an increasing rate of 130 million phones a year, we get several thousand pounds of toxic mush lying around in landfills everywhere. We really ought to find a better way to dispose of cell phones.

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[Conti027]

send it to outer space

 

[anticlutch]

There's something called recycling for a reason

 

[a111087]

send it to outer space

lol, that is about how water pollution begun

 

[theonetruewill]

There's something called recycling for a reason

Yeah, I always see mobile phone recycling bins, but there are never any in there for me to ni..... I mean to see

 

[WarEagleAU]

I dont think Copper and Zinc are very toxic, in fact I work around it alot. Now Nickel, the dust or shavings from that, are known to cause cancer (I work in GE Plastics and make the film that makes LCD tvs and notebooks and computer monitors and we do electroform nickel cobalt plating). Antimony, Im not sure what that is...so I cant comment. But Copper and Zinc arent that bad really. Im more worried about the Lead and perhaps mercury in some of these phones.

 

[OnBoard]

They should just stop making 20 new models every week! How many choices do you really need. Make one cheap, one cool for teens, one with big fonts for eldery, one business model and one with all the latest useless stuff you can brag about. Now update every model twice a year and that's surely enough phones for everyone to pick.

Must be my fourth year with Nokia 6100, small, superlight, has all I need and still with orginal battery. Now I can brag about being enviroment friendly for not upgrading my phone (well take that back with computer upgrades ).

 

[jocksteeluk]

copper, nickel and zinc are metals, when did they get redefined chemicals?

 

[anticlutch]

They should just stop making 20 new models every week! How many choices do you really need. Make one cheap, one cool for teens, one with big fonts for eldery, one business model and one with all the latest useless stuff you can brag about. Now update every model twice a year and that's surely enough phones for everyone to pick.

Must be my fourth year with Nokia 6100, small, superlight, has all I need and still with orginal battery. Now I can brag about being enviroment friendly for not upgrading my phone (well take that back with computer upgrades ).

That's like telling Intel or AMD to stop bringing out new processor models. It's their business/industry; the only way to counter the environmental impact is to aggressivly promote the recycling of old cell phones and/or other electronics.

 

[Casheti]

Who cares about camera phones. A phone is a phone, you make calls with it. Get a phone, make calls from it, job done. No need to upgrade it. If you want pictures, buy a camera. And the same applies for other features. Personally I don't own a mobile phone at all and I'm doing just fine.

 

[Poisonsnak]

If you live in north america you can go to these guys:

http://www.rbrc.org/call2recycle/

plus their spokesperson is Richard Karn (Al from Home Improvement)!