I recently found the graveyard of cellphones and am not sure what do with them. I know that you can't throw them away, but where should they go? Is there any organization that looks for old cellphones? Or is there somewhere that responsibly recycles them?
By Stella from Manchester, WA
Stella, if you Google "recycle old cell phones"you'll find quite a few options to choose from.
Hope this helps you.
E-Tech Recycling does an excellent job of recycling electronics in an environmentally conscious way. They are used by the numerous tech companies in our area and several municipalities as well.
They mostly deal with computers but they do accept cell phones also. You would need to ship the phones to them if you don't have a better way of getting them to Hillsboro. :-)
Stella, Donate them to Cell Phones for Soldiers.
www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com/
There are many drop off locations, usually a VFW or American Legion. The web site has a search page so you can find one in your area.
Thank you for not throwing them away!
If you will search on the internet for companies that buy old phones you will find many who will pay for the shipping and send you money after they receive the phones. It worked for us.
If you can't locate a place to donate them call your local city disposal to see if there is an electronics recycling center reasonably near you.
Universities and community colleges often have electronic donation bins too. You can always call them up and ask them where their bins are and just drop them off.
You actually may be able to sell some of them on craigslist. My DH breaks them a lot, guess construction sites are hard on phones.
A church may use them for elderly, 911 works even when the phone isn't activated.
Petsmart has postage paid mailers that you can take and keep till you need them; place old printer cartridges or phones in them and mail. All procedes go to the local humane society for animal care.
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
Why can't we use old cell phones again, even though they are a bit out of date? Is there no way to re-use them ourselves?
By Judith B. from Houston, TX
If you can find a carrier I don't see why you couldn't use an old cell phone. There will be some restrictions though. Some cell towers work off a (for lack of a better word) frequency and if the chip set in the phone doesn't broadcast on an accepted frequency then the phone will have no signal.
For example, I went to Denmark at the beginning of the year and I asked Verizon if my cell phone would work there. They checked my model to the frequency used on the cell towers they have in Europe and informed me my phone wasn't new enough to get reception from one of those towers.
Same idea with you old phone. It would probably get reception on all the old towers still in use across the country but none of the newer towers put up to broaden a carriers range.
Whenever we get new phones, if the old ones are not completely broken, we save them. Our carrier uses sim cards so if we break the new phone (this happens often with DH) you can just put the sim card back in the old one and use it.
