September 12, 2008

Cell phone collection site set up for Green Week

The university community can bring personally owned cell phones to be recycled to information technology's Green Week cell phone collection center at its Shopping Offline store, Stewart Center, Room G65. The store is open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday; and noon to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

"It's important for each of us to be aware that we can make a real difference in preserving our environment,” said Gerry McCartney, CIO and vice president of the Office of Information Technology at Purdue.

Facts and statistics, according to an AT&T fact sheet, include:

* According to the Environmental Protection Agency, recycling 100 million phones would save enough upstream energy to power more than 194,000 U.S. households.

* Fewer than 20 percent of cell phones are recycled each year. One reason may be that most people don't know where to recycle them.

* Electronic waste is accumulating almost three times faster than ordinary household trash.

* An estimated 100 to 130 million cell phones are no longer being used and may be languishing in storage.

* Recycling cell phones reduces greenhouse emissions, keeps valuable material out of landfills and incinerators and conserves natural resources.

* Cell phones and accessories are made from valuable resources, such as precious metals, copper and plastics, all of which require energy to extract and manufacture.

* If consumers were able to reuse those 100 million cell phones, the environmental savings would be even greater, saving enough energy to power more than 370,000 homes each year.

* Recycling just a million cell phones reduces greenhouse gas emissions equal to taking 1,368 cars off the road for a year.

Contact: Jennifer Kapp, (765) 496-7406, jkapp@purdue.edu

Source: Gerry McCartney, (765) 496-2270, mccart@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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