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Discarded Cell Phones
psychictv points to a NYT story about discarded cell phones as an environmental hazard. The study mentioned in the article is available online. Every year or so we run a story on paper, disposable cell phones but even these would generate a fair amount of waste.
It's nice to know that we have an overproduction/disposal problem with cell phones, but aren't the pounds and pounds of lead in monitors and cases much more of a hazard?
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
I have 3 used cell phones sitting at home. Why? Everytime I have changed service providers I was REQUIRED to buy a new phone. In fact the phone I actively use now it the exact same model as my previous phone. My current provider said it was "not possible" to reprogram the phone to work on their network. He had no answer as to how the charities are able to reprogram them for battered women's shelters.
Until the providers allow cell phones to change networks, the useless ones will keep piling up!
Sign me "Peeved at the artificial waste!"
Over the years, the wireless phone industry has developed a culture of disposability. This is not simply the latest phone fashions or the newest technology. It is also a question of design and manufacturing.
Wireless phone makers design their products with the idea that they won't last more than a year or so. Is it any wonder that we're hearing about environmental issues with that sort of disposable attitude?
Make the phones more durable. Using an expensive
phone for 18 months only and then throwing it away is silly. My mobile phone is from year 1998, I still use it and the newer models do not offer anything that I need.
This may be a simple case of equating new technology with waste, as opponents are apt to do. The truth is, we generate waste everywhere, doing everything.. I don't know of any effect from the waste that will cause governments to mandate producing less or recycling more. The US population seems to put up with any quality of air or water given them.
Eventually, someone must propose money-based incentives for production using waste materials. This is the only way to bootstrap such commerce. We had the aluminum can/glass/motor oil progress 20 years ago. It may be time for more, but who's picking up the bill?
Throw the phones in the garbage and solve the garbage problem.
If the wireless companies are going to sell phones that won't work with any other service provider, it should be their problem when all these crippled phones end up in landfills.
314-15-9265
In the US, each provider insists on having their own network and poviding their own phones. This severely aggravates the problem, since, as another person pointed out, people get a new phone every time they switch plans/providers. I've gone through 3 phones in 2 years, while I would have been happy keeping the first one. This is less of an issue in Europe (At least in the Netherlands) where providers use standard phones that accept a small SIM-card with the relevant data on it. When you switch providers, just slide the new SIM-card into your old phone and you're all set. When you want to upgrade, slide your SIM-card in a new phone and you're set.
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
These people get paid to find problems, whether they are significant or not. If you think cellphones are a significant problem, I dare you to go to a landfill sometime and try to find just one cellphone.
Nor are the chemicals in them a significant danger. Computer monitors, yes, contain a lot of lead. But all these other stories about the dangers of electronic waste are bullshit scare stories.
I donate my old phones to the poor starving kids of the world.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Imagine the waste from all those big cel phones from the 80's.
Or even better, help them build an infrastructure so they can support themselves.