You might not expect it, but you’ll get a smile and a nod from Mother Earth when you buy a used phone.
According to the latest records from the wireless industry, there are currently just over 250 million cell phone users in the United States. The non-stop onslaught of new devices, service providers continually stacking incentives, wear and tear, and the need to keep up with the Joneses mean you probably replace your phone every 18 months, or less depending on your age. In fact, over 426 thousand phones are decommissioned on a daily basis in America alone.
The problem of dealing with discarded electronics, especially cell phones, is that they contain some pretty nasty stuff. While you may view them as a disposable commodity, cell phones are packed with environmentally damaging materials. Toxic batteries, the bodies are made with PVC and the circuit boards contain small traces of heavy metals including lead, mercury and cadmium. These toxic substances can get into the soil, leak into the water supply, or be released into the air if they are not properly disposed of.
In 2008 alone, loosely discarded, consumer electronics comprised 20 to 50 million tons of waste worldwide, more than 5% of all solid waste. Now consider the fact that the EPA estimates that over 60% of unused electronics end up being stored or stockpiled in the home and you start to see how big of a problem we are talking about. How many old cell phones do you have in your sock drawer? I bet you still have an old VCR in your garage, right?
The more phones that are manufactured the bigger the problem gets. Fortunately, it is an issue that we can help contain. The easiest way to make a positive influence is to support electronics recycling programs like flipswap.com, and to replace or upgrade electronic devices with used ones whenever possible.
It’s easier than you might think to go green and buy used. Companies like Zendoo specialize in selling high quality used phones. By picking up a fully functional used phone you can reduce demand for new phones and keep a phone out of the landfill.
When you buy used electronics you have twice the impact. Replacing your cell phone with a used device reduces the amount of waste that towns and cities have to handle. If just half of the people in the United States took the simple steps to recycle and reuse cell phones, we could reduce waste by 185 tons per week.
Zendoo was founded in 2004 with the goal of increasing the usable life of cell phones. We believe the best way to keep cell phones out of landfills is to put them in the hands of people who can still use them. By providing fully functional used alternatives to consumers across the globe, Zendoo has helped put millions of devices back into service that would otherwise be piling up in our landfills every year.
