Recellular employee Myron Woods tests phones to see if they can be resold or re-used. Here, he's got a Nokia 6019, the model reporter Shawn Allee dropped off for recycling. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
It’s pretty clear Americans like their cell phones. On average, we get a new one about every
eighteen months. And yet, we hold on to the old ones, too; the government estimates there’re
about one hundred million lying around in closets and drawers. Shawn Allee found people eager
to take your old phones – if only you’d recycle them:
Transcript
It’s pretty clear Americans like their cell phones. On average, we get a new one about every
eighteen months. And yet, we hold on to the old ones, too; the government estimates there’re
about one hundred million lying around in closets and drawers. Shawn Allee found people eager
to take your old phones – if only you’d recycle them:
I put an old phone in a recycling box a while ago.
I checked around and found it went to one of the nation’s largest phone refurbishers.
It’s a company called Recellular. And it’s based in an old auto parts plant in Dexter, Michigan.
“It’s a big open space with a lot of room to handle the 20,000 phones that come in every day.
You need a lot of benches, you need a lot of cubby holes.”
Vice President Mike Newman points to some incoming collection boxes.
“Every box is a mystery. You have no idea what’s in there until you open it up and start
sorting it out.”
Newman’s company is hunting for working phones to resell here or overseas. Before that, his
people sort and test every model of phone.
And workers like Myron Woods remove personal data.
“Contacts, the voice mails, the ringtones, text messages. Hit OK and the phone’s cleared
out. After that you make sure the phone calls out. You get a ringtone, you hear the
operator, and then you’re done.”
Newman: “In 2008 we processed almost 6 million phones and for 2009, we’re looking at
more than double-digit growth again.”
And of those six million phones, Mike Newman says he can sell about half of them. He’d do
better if people like me didn’t keep phones in drawers for so long.
“The longer you wait, the less value it has so, if you move down from that old phone, as
hard as it might be to part with it, it’s really important to recycle it as soon as possible – it
will do the most good.”
What about Newman’s other phones – the duds? He has a different company near Chicago
recycle them.
Allee: “And here they are … holy mackerel.”
I’m now at Simms Recycling Solutions. A conveyer belt is moving thousands of phones.
“There’s the end of the line for your cell phones.”
Mark Glavin is the VP of operations here. He says there’s gold, silver, and other metals in the
phones he gets from Recellular.
“The cell phones get shredded into somewhat uniform-sized pieces.”
Glavin sticks the pieces in an oven to burn off the plastic – and then grinds what’s left.
Glavin: “That’s what’s left of the cell phones.”
Allee: “It’s almost like the powder you use for a baby, except its black.”
Glavin: “Yes.”
Glavin says there’s gold and other metal in the powder – so metal companies will buy it.
He also has stubborn chunks of metal that won’t grind.
“Those get pulled off and then those go to the furnace room to be melted.”
Glavin: “This is appropriately named the furnace room, where all the melting goes on. It
gets nice and toasty in here in the winter time.”
Allee: “Wow, what are we seeing here?”
Glavin: “After the material has been melted, we’ll cast it into molds and into 30-40 pound
ingots.”
He’ll sell metal from these ingots along with that black powder.
Recellular and Glavin’s company recovers about 96 pounds of gold from its phones each year.
Plus, that gold’s worth more than a million dollars. And recycling saves energy, and prevents
pollution from gold mining.
Glavin says recycling is taking off, and he can always count on people wanting the latest and
greatest phones.
Glavin: “Pretty soon your cell phone will be a chip like, on an ear-ring and a watch, and
there’s nothing to it except for a very tiny electronic.”
Allee: “And people will still swap it for the next one.”
Glavin: “Without a doubt.”
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.