Why the planet won't thank you for throwing your old mobile phone into the bin

Tired of your old mobile phone? Ready to toss it and get a new one? Have you ever considered recycling it? Recycling your mobile phones helps to protect the environment by reusing materials and saving energy. Most of the materials that mobile phones are made of, such as plastics, copper, and other metals can be reused and turned into new products. This saves material and cuts down on waste.

Before you simply throw your old mobile phone in the rubbish bin, consider this: mobile phones and other wireless electronic devices contain an astonishing number of harmful elements, such as lead, beryllium, arsenic, mercury, antimony, and cadmium. These toxic substances can cause any number of diseases and conditions, all of them serious or even fatal. These include cancer of the lungs, liver, and kidneys, seizures, retardation, high blood pressure, and damage to the central nervous system, digestive tract, and mouth (including teeth and gums). You can develop a variety of conditions due to repeated or extreme exposure of these toxic substances, which can even lead to death. These extremely harmful substances can make their way into the water supply of cities and communities, they can contaminate the soil used for growing crops, and they can also poison entire animal populations.

The above information is not meant to be a macabre scare tactic; rather, it represents the very real risks we saturate our environment with every day through the improper disposal of mobile phones and other electronic devices. Thankfully, there is a solution. A market has sprung up for recycling mobile phones.

This market works in a rather unfamiliar way. Instead of the customer paying for goods and services, as in most industries, the burgeoning mobile phone recycling industry is built around the concept that the customer is paid by the recycler. That's right, phones for cash! Phone recycling companies will pay you for the right to properly dispose of harmful chemicals in your cell phone and re-use the plastics and other materials in future products. Other companies will sell old mobile phones online, or even open up stores in poorer countries offering old mobile phones at a discount rate. In either case, you can be sure that you are contributing to the health of the environment and those around you.

It is easy to say that one cares about the environment; such proclamations have become fashionable in today's society. However, research shows that only a very small percentage of people actually recycle regularly, and even fewer think to recycle things like mobile phones, digital cameras, or PDAs. These items are most often taken out with the rest of the rubbish, to be placed in a landfill or dumped into the environment. As such devices are broken or damaged in the process of being moved, they often leak out dangerous elements into the rubbish, soil, or foliage around them.

So before you add your mobile phone to the growing rubbish heap, consider the consequences of your action. Help the environment, recycle your phone.

Felicity is a intermittent journalist, writing intermittent pieces in the UK on telecommunications and mobile devices. See how much you could get for phone recycling for your old cellular handset, as well as price comparison on all the phone recycling companies like Envirofone at recyclemobilephones.co.uk

For more information on this news, please visit recyclemobilephones.co.uk Blog.