For those consumers that recently scored the latest iPhone from Apple, a new scheme is allowing mobile users with old mobile handsets to recycle them for donation to soldiers serving abroad.
Cell Phones for Soldiers collects working, but unwanted mobile handsets from anyone who has recently purchased a new mobile device. Phones in working order are then recycled so that soldiers abroad can call home to their families. By selling the donated mobile devices to a local recycling company, the ogranisation is able to raise money to purchase phone cards for soldiers living and working abroad.
The organisation was founded by two American teenagers after they heard of one soldier that had an $8,000 mobile bill just calling back to the US to chat with his family. Donations can be made via mail, or from more than 40,000 drop-off locations across the nation.
Using mobile phone recycling as a means of raising support for charity has become internationally popular. Many organisations across the UK and Europe have begun urging mobile users to donate their old devices as a means of raising funds.
In the UK alone, millions of pounds have been raised through the scheme. Charities that have taken up this practice include domestic violence shelters, schools, homeless shelters, cancer research institutes, and many more.
The British Heart Foundation recently launched its own mobile recycling drive in the UK. Now, the foundation collects old mobiles at several locations across the country. On the British Heart Foundations website it estimates that over 100 million phones in the UK alone are sitting in drawers unused.
|
|
