If We Should Recycle Paper, Shouldn't We Seek To Recycle Tableware and Home Goods?
The Sunday NY Times published this article below about the environmental impact of cellphones on the world. After reading this, I thought, "I need to get in the business of recycling cellphones-each one is worth $1, and people will give them to you for free. There are 300 million sitting in desk drawers. That's $300 million." I then thought, "What is the tableware and home good industry doing about recycling?"
[Cellphones] are the most valuable form of e-waste. Each one contains about a dollar’s worth of precious metals, mostly gold. ... Last year, according to ABI Research, 1.2 billion phones were sold worldwide. Sixty percent of them probably replaced existing ones. In the United States, phones are cast aside after, on average, 12 months. And according to the industry trade group CTIA, four out of every five people in the country own cellphones.
Umicore estimates that, together with its competitors, it received only 1 percent of all phones that were discarded globally in 2006.