My phone? Which one?
photo credit: electrictreehouse.com
In the same idea as Extreme Couponing, an American reality show where people go completely insane, digging out coupon pamphlets out of recycling bins, collecting them in binders and then hitting the local grocery store for a 4 hour shopping adventure. They bring their children and spouse and come out of there with 6 shopping carts of random stuff (hand sanitizer, shampoo, tissue, canned goods, gatorade) and only pay about 40$. Yay for accessibility! But wait, there are still starving people out there. Oh…right! Hand sanitizer isn’t edible.
Now Verizon is offering phones for a penny IF you sign up for a two-year contract. Sorry folks, this offer only works in the United States. Again, yay for accessibility! But also nay for encouraging over-consumerism. It’s nice to have the latest technology, check emails faster than the speed of light and to telepathically communicate with your gadgets. I may not be a technology crazed person, which would explain why I only got my smart phone when my T9 broke in half (I did try tape…). The problem lays in what do we do with the old cellphones?
We could use our old iphone as a remote control, a coaster and even a very expensive Frisbee. Or…..”recycle it”. Wondering about the quotation marks, eh? Well, Treehugger says the e-waste recycling centres are pretty much the worst place to be. All the nasty chemicals oozing out of the old ipads and tablets probably aren’t what unicorns drink to sparkle more. Sooo, here’s the downside of having cool cellphones: some are trying to survive by stripping all the precious metals off cellphones (gold, platinum and copper) in India and China, but end up dying of cancer rather than hunger.
Sources:
-katherine
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