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Biodegradable Cell Phones Sprout Into Flowers
Neurowiz writes "Tired of your cell phone and lusting after the new model with all the geek-gadgets? Worried about the effect that throwing away your cell phones may have on the environment? Worry not! 'Researchers at the University of Warwick's Warwick Manufacturing Group, in conjunction with PVAXX Research & Development Ltd, have devised a novel way to recycle discarded mobile telephones - bury them and watch them transform into the flower of your choice.' What's next? Plant your PC/Mac and watch a house grow?"
Don't get me wrong, it's better than nothing, but nobody who buys one of these disposible cell phones are should think they're making an environmentally sound purchase because it might sprout a pretty flower someday. There's a lot more to the phone than just the case, and a lot of it isn't anything you'd want to see buried in your backyard -- batteries, plastic circuit boards, etc. In practice, it seems more likely that this will actually *harm* the environment as morons bury the whole thing once their minutes are used up, the whole time thinking they're being a responsible friend of the earth. Even if you're smarter than the average bear and read the directions about only burying the case, it's still *far* better to get yourself an cell phone on contract and use it for a few years before trading up than it is to go through a few of these things a year.
Of course, given the profession that tends to be the biggest customer for disposable phones, if you're concerned about the environment I'd also suggest that you should encourage your customers to recycle those glass vials you're selling them their crack in.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Plant your PC/Mac and watch a house grow?"
Wouldn't planting your Mac produce an apple tree?
While this is a cute idea, it is hardly a biodegradable cellular telephone. Based on what I could glean from the press release, all that is biodegradable is the plastic case. Biodegradable plastics have been around for a while now and this seems to be more of a marketing gimmick than anything else. Cell phone manufacturers, like Nokia, have had recycling programs for old cell phones in place for a few years now. These recycling programs deal with almost the entire cell phone and not just the plastic case (which could always be recycled anyways by taking apart the phone and pitching it into the recycle bin (if your municipality supports this)).
"When Nature Calls We All Shall Drown" Johan Edlund
...the Lupins perforating your eardrums will.
Timing is everything.
What's next? Plant your PC/Mac and watch a house grow?"
I could only wish, I'd own more property than Ted Turner.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Remember when there was a standard phone design in the old days ? Well At&t had a hard plastic version that was biodegradable in the early 80's as I recall.
I can't here you.
My phone is breaking up.
No, not the signal.
Yes, the actual phone. It's biodegradable.
I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I need to bury now it so the flower will grow. Bye.
Plant your PC/Mac and watch a house grow?
Plant your mac, grow an apple tree, of course.
Plant your windows PC, grow some blue flowers... of DEATH!
... They turn into fishtanks. Duh.
Seems to me this would turn into a situation where the phone gets wet or moist and then suddenly you've got a flower growing out of the phone you're trying to use causing you to disgard it early or at least the case.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Just don't get caught with a marijuana-themed phone. ^_^
Right is wrong when left is right.
I buried my Windows PC and it 'sprouted' a pile of shit. I've had been turning that into fertilizer for years. Unfortunately I was sued for copyright infringment -- something about a derivative work.
iPot.
Regarding the PC/MAC jokes... If you have that many PC's/MAC's that you are trying to get rid of, send a few my way... Don't plant them!
growing a pizza parlor from stem cells?
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
a novel way to recycle discarded mobile telephones - bury them and watch them transform into the flower of your choice
WRONG! The summary would lead one to believe you can do this with present cell phones, but this is barely in the prototype stage, much less actually in use for years. If just the article submitters would RTA. Think you could do that next time?
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
I didn't RTFA, but for some reason, I'm pretty sure this doesn't apply to the battery. Which is probably one of the more toxic parts of the phone.
How about building a phone that lasts more than 1 year. Or supplying a battery for the phone that costs little enough so that buying a whole new phone isn't an attractive option. If you told someone in 1950 that not only most people have portable phones in 50 years, but that they'd spend over $200 on this phone, and replace it ever year, they'd probably laugh in your face.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
you can get inside easily enough, but have to ask the house for permission so it will open the door to let you back outside.
If its a PC that ran Windows, you don't get any doors or windows - just the holes where they should have been.
If its a PC that ran *nix, you have to unhang/rehang the doors every time you want in or out.
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
I am more worried about effects of radio waves on my brains!!!
I don't know...I can choose some pretty interesting flowers. You know the flower that a supermodel pops out of when the petals open? Yeah, that'd be my flower of choice. Or perhaps the G5-flower, which is exactly like the supermodel flower except...you know. Another interesting one to see would be the live-grenade flower. Not to be close while it blooms, mind you, just close enough to watch the fun.
But...for some reason, I don't believe that the researchers actually have phenomenal flower-based super powers. It's probably limited to whatever kind of flowers the researchers already have. Oh well. Back to the drawing board.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
One word: yodeling.
Now we know why the flower in the Movie ET was a great significance. It was actually his cell phone.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
What's next? Plant your PC/Mac and watch a house grow?
How nutty. That's like, using old RAM boards as keychains or something. Stop with this nonsense....
___
"We had planned to integrate a Web browser with our operating system as far back as 1993" Microsoft (27 Jul 1998, filing its first court responses to federal antitrust)
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
I predict this thread will have one of the highest "funny-mods per post" in recent Slashdot history.
--
This post is here to bring down this thread's funny average.
What's next? Plant your PC/Mac and watch a house grow?
I could turn my current PC in to a house? I'd never have to pay a heating bill again!
only if you're picky and won't consider FP could also stand for 'fourth post'
And now to avoid an offtopic mod of my own:
I think the easiest thing is just to not junk your phone all the time. I'm still (rarely) using an old analog Nokia. it gets the job done.
Karma: Negative (Mostly affected by dorm trolling)
Where have all the cellphones gone?
Long time text messaging
Where have all the cellphones gone?
Long time to roam
Where have all the cellphones gone?
Gone to flowers every one
When can they hear me now?
When can they hear me now?
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
OK, so we've determined that if you plant a Mac, you should get an apple tree. Simple enough.
The problem is harder when you get to Intel (or AMD) PC's. Should it depend on the OS that's installed, or simply the hardware?
In either case, I think you'd get some interesting results depending on what components you have installed. For instance, would a machine dual booted to Linux & XP result in an environment in hell that was suitable for penguin habitation?
with sweaty ham hands that talks on the phone a lot you might get it to sprout while you are still using it?? Same question for the "say it, don't spray it" crowd.
.....get pot. Damn hippies.
". . .pressure from some customers who want to feel they are making an environmentally sensitive purchase."
The emphasis is mine.
KFG
Watts over time gives you watt hours, not more watts. Time is already included in the watt unit.
If you take 100 watts for 3 hours, you don't get 300 watts as this totally bogus article says.
I certainly hope your post was a joke.
... Beings that a flower is so much like a cel phone. It usually works better outside, and only within certain regions of the country.
Are we going to be billed every time the thing blooms? Is there a service charge if we want to transplant it to another pot? These are things we need to know.
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
Now, instead of donating my old phones to one of the many charities that reprogram them and give them to those in need of ways to make emergency calls I can instead bury it in dirt! Where do I sign up?!?
[insert sig file here]
The emphasis was on the word feel.
KFG
In other words, 10,000 fit into one square meter.
In other words, all the mobile phones in the UK will fit into a small number of trucks. with compacting, that number might be as small as one.
in other words, this is a marketing ploy.
But it's too bad that our phones will get to enter the third life before we will.
That Global Ethics press release is dated 2002. I'm not sure when exactly many of the mobile phone operators started their collection programs, but I can remember them occuring when I replaced my first mobile phone and that was more than 2 years ago. You see, all mobile phones have the capability (well, some Samsung models of a few years ago were unable and Samsung paid the price through a lawsuit) to place emergency calls whether they are activated or not. Manufacturers periodically collect old phones to donate to such places as women's shelters who then distribute them to battered women in need of an emergency phone. I'm sure the manufacturers receive a huge tax deduction for this act of charity.
m l
Anyway, if you do not want to wait for a local collection event, you can go to Motorola's web site and print out a postage-paid sticker and you can mail them your old phone. If it is in good shape it may end up helping someone in need and if not, they make sure it is disposed of in an environmentally-friendly way. And as far as I can tell, Motorola collects any mobile phone, not just Motorola phones.
http://promo.motorola.com/recycle/phones/index.ht
Even if you have
Even if you need
I don't mean to stare
We don't have to breed
We could plant a house
We could build a tree
I don't even care
We could have all three
She said
-Nirvana. Breed. Nevermind. SubPop, 1991
Sorry man, looks like they have prior art.
I'd rather support a foodbank. I think this process utilizes the entire phone instead of just the case.
So many cell phone users have their heads up their butts that we'll have a nation of walking gardens.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
Those are some huge images linked from the site... so just in case of a Slashdotting, MirrorDot has the page and images mirrored.
~Jay
One thing is sure, planting a windows pc will produce radishes that the people of Shelbyville will "enjoy".
I'm going to throw away my phone right now into the garbage and buy this one.
I was happy with the first phone I got about 9 years ago. I was also happy with the second, and third, and fourth, and even the current one I have. The problem isn't that people want the latest phone (although there are some people so motivated). The problem is that if you switch providers, your phone won't work anymore. I have several perfectly good phones sitting around my house because whatever provider I was with ticked me off enough to go to a different company. I don't believe there is any reason that a universal phone couldn't be made that would work with any provider (you can roam most places). The reason we will have 500 million cell phones that need to be discarded by the end of 2005 is mostly due to the greed of the cellphone providers.
If you plant a Windows PC, you get a Glass House. And the first bug to come along will crash it.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
Of all the plants in the world, why would they choose a weed like the sunflower? Anyone who's every had to chop one down in a cottonfield or cornfield knows what I'm talking about, those things are like miniature trees. How much harder would it have been to have it make corn? Or even just become fertilizer, that's better than a weed...
I don't think planting a computer will do, but planting and growing a house certainly seems feasible, at least at far as foundation, shading, and some help on the windproofing and insulation is concerned.
some extra work will be required - perhaps alleviated further with some extra genetical engineering, though...
hmm google tree house genes
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Hope you didn't use Windows... imagine all the security flaws and plenty of back doors in the house!
woo... warwick... yeh! sorry, feels good to have my uni get a mention
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
"There is a hi res picture at the top and the bottom of this page (click on teh links saying prinnt version." There is no close parens, "the" and "print" are spelled incorrectly. Stupid editors.
If one of these falls into that miniscule percentage that have exploded in people's ears then there might be the additional side-effect of having a big ass daisy growing out of the side of your head...
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
I just bury all of my old phones in CowboyNeal's backyard anyway.
Sooner or later all mass-produced, consumer-level products will be biodegradable, or, more accurately, "key-enabled" biodegradable - products which become biodegradable when exposed to a particular chemical key. It's really the only thing that makes sense in a world of 6+ billion consumers and industrialized mass production. We live in an ecosystem evolved to readily break down particular organic compounds. We can either create our own, separate artificial ecosystem designed to recycle our inorganic waste, or we can engineer our products to fit into the natural decomposition/recycling process going on all around us. Much effort is being put into the first plan, but ultimately I believe that the 2nd one is the only long-term solution to our waste/pollution problem.
In step with our population explosion, we have moved away from use of natural materials (wood, plant fibers, bone), and increased the amount of decomposition-resistent (i.e. - dead) materials in our environment exponentially. These artificial materials have enabled us to make great advances in the construction of strong, durable items. But we have been limited by our extremely crude - relative to what goes on inside our bodies - ability to generate and manipulate complicated organic molecules. As this ability improves and decreases in cost, it will become increasingly expedient to shift to producing manufactured items out of materials that break down easily and harmlessly when no longer needed. Otherwise our waste stream will eventually smother us and our supply of essential raw materials will end up completely locked awy in crushed cars and dirty diapers.
sz
- There seems to be a problem with your system:
I click "ok" - "sorry, browser not compatible"Cookies are disabled
Browser not Microsoft Internet Explorer
Unsuported OS (only Windows and Mac supported)
Do you want to go ahead and try to test your bandwidth anyway
So let's try Knoqeror. No dice even though I fake being IE on both Mac and Windows. Warwick's page displays all my browser user agent info correctly but it apparently also checks for my version of WMP - it is indicated as version "0". I suppose I need to go google on whether faking that out is possible as well but honestly, why would I bother? This isn't some kind of world-changing quality research. So, I'll just forget about it, forever thinking U of Warwick is populated by sheep and idiots.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Why not donate your old phones to the local women's shelter or a charity in your area that could use it? Pick up some REAL karma points. eBay will get you about 5 bucks for that piece o'crap - donating them might actually make a difference in your community. Hell, if they don't want it - give it to some kid so he/she can take it apart and become a geek like you someday!
Ok let me see what are the mayor threats to hummanity:
Aids.
Cancer.
Malaria.
Dengue.
And the scientific community comes with:
Biodegradable phones.
Keep those tax and contribution dollars working boys...
For Apple, rival MP3 players that sprout into iPods! PCs that you bury in the ground, and up pocks shares of Apple stock! ... or more hair to sprout on Steve Jobs' head.
Eureka!
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Doesn't Germany have some law that requires the manufacturer of a product to have a disposal plan for their product when it goes end of life (and pay for that disposal)?
Sounds like a prototype for the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (GECK) that we will see once the earth becomes the mutant wasteland seen in Fallout. Now's your chance to make sure YOUR Vault ends up with a functional one!
--- Tyner=
Who posted this? "What's next? Plant your PC/Mac and watch a house grow?"
/. mods edit out stupid comments like that?
I can see how a cell phone case could have flower seeds embedded, but explain to me how the hell you "grow a house"? Why don't the
You also must realize that the technology being used on newer networks can cause old phones to not work correctly. The new technology used in cell phones is much better than what existed even a decade ago.
For example Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology allows many more phones to be used in a given area, but obviously you need to have a newer phone. I think the standard wasn't even out till '91. But they keep improving it.
So yeah, those damn greedy cell phone companies, using newer technology that allows more people to use cell phones, pay less for them, use less transmitting power, etc. They are trying to take a finite, expensive resource (bandwidth) and spread it out to as many users as they can as efficiently as they can. Damn them indeed.
Of course, you might want something faster than a tree... maybe a saguaro cactus?
The CB App. What's your 20?
So it looks like Grim Fandango was right.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
I've had all kinds of little crappy brick phones assigned to me at work, and none even came close in voice quality to my 5 year old Star-Tac. Since replacements are available on Ebay for cheap, I'll probably keep one forever.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
See http://www.phones4charity.org/.
What's next? Plant your PC/Mac and watch a house grow?
My choices are Bauhaus or a double-wide trailer? No thanks...
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
I'd settle for a phone that I can bury in my pocket and NOT have it transform into a raging fireball.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
This idea was published in details in june 2004, called Mobile.Seed, part of the masters thesis project of Belmer Negrillo, at Interaction Ivrea ( http://people.interaction-ivrea.it/b.negrillo/thes is/mobileseed/ ). The concept is exactly the same (disposal>flower), and the biodegradable cover is proposed as the first stage towards a fully biodegradable mobile phone. Even the idea of the seed being visible was already there. The site is still incomplete, but if you download the PDF paper you can see many tables, images, scenarios and launching strategies (appendix). Actually the idea there is further developed as a marketing strategy to change the relationship between the user and the electronic device.
And forget dialing 911 while on the road with one of these. It would work with an analog phone, but the GSM one will tell you "No service" even while you stand in the middle of downtown Des Moines and everyone else's GSM phone works just fine. I actually had this happen to me in Des Moines a few months ago.
If you really want a phone strictly for 911, go get an old analog phone off of eBay. It might cost more to ship it than the phone's worth, but how much IS that 911 access worth to you?
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Oh good, so instead of planned obsolesence, I'll have devices that I am using actually start to decompose while I'm still using them.
Remember when durable goods were durable?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
WOW, maybe it'll be shaped like a pineapple!!!! One could live exactly like SpongeBob Square Pants!!!!
- Danny
For those of you who would prefer actually making some $ off that phone you paid for instead of giving it to these 'creative gents' who will paint it like a flower and drop it in a pot there is actually a company that will buy your old phones from you. See: www.thewirelesssource.com - Don't throw your old phones out. - Don't paint them like flowers and leave them in a pot. - Make money selling them to a refurbisher who can then distribute it to someone who will appreciate it. The old saying stands: One man's trash is another man's treasure.
Cases for tube type radios used to by made of sawdust and phenolic resin (phenol formaldehyde mixed with sawdust, pressed in a mold, and steam cured). This shiny brown material is known as bakelite. Sumitomo Bakelite is making what they call an "environment-friendly" phenolic resin. So now the resin and filler are biodegradable.
/. referenced company.
Sumitomo makes cell phone cases but I do not know if they are the supplier to the
I just happen to like bakelite.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
What's next, getting more penguins in the zoo by burying SUSE all over the place? (No-one is gonna miss that dist anyways...)
Being the solution here. I.e. - materials not susceptible to typical organic decomposition w/o the breaking of a particular set of chemical bonds.
And yeah, I remember when durable goods were durable. I also remember when fashion wasn't the driving force behind the turnover of consumer goods. (e.g. - cell phones)
In any case, today's goods fall apart anyways while you're using them. Wouldn't it be better if they were actually breaking down into something you could throw on a compost heap rather than a brittle mess of plastic that is compacted and sits for a few thousand years?
sz
Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, "Pushing up the daisies."
Plant a PC/Mac: grow a house
Plant a Beowulf cluster: grow an apartment complex.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Does this mean I have to declare my cellphone at the border? Will an import permit be required?
don't be silly, houses don't grow, they're built. How'd you decide upon a house anyway? Couldn't you say tree? Least trees are growable things.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Cell phones + microwaves + seed = X-Flowers? I'm afraid...
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Think of 'em as fertilizer more than seeds
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
That would make sense if you are comparing the first phone I ever bought with the newest one, but the phone I bought last year (which is a newer model than other people using my current provider are using) shouldn't fall into this category. A one to two year old phone should be usable for any provider. I understand that there are technical issues involved, but the majority of the problem isn't a technical one, it is the phone companies trying to force people to stay with them through extortion rather than giving good service. If I had kept the same provider all of these years, I doubt I would have to have switched phones anyway.
This is remarkably similar to an international award winning design published in 2003 - http://www.eniya.com/project/sustainable/index.sht ml