Two Dayton women have become dedicated to helping soldiers just by recycling old cell phones. Dorothy Wingard and Janis Bricker became involved with the Cell Phones for Soldiers scheme, which aims to recycle used cell phones in exchange for prepaid calling cards which are then given to soldiers who have been deployed in foreign countries, enabling them to call their loved ones back home, around two years ago and have since become addicted to the cause, being responsible for the recycling of more than twelve hundred old cell phones between them.

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According to an article on The Next Web, popular Black Eyed Peas rapper and producer Will.I.Am has been hired on at Intel as Director of Creative Innovation. His responsibilities will include collaborating with the manufacturing company on “many creative and technology endeavours across the ‘computer continuum’”. What does that mean? Apparently, he’s going be helping Intel design their gadgets – laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

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It’s the Super Bowl next month, perhaps the biggest annual sporting event in the United States, and one company is taking the opportunity to use the event to spread the word about cell phone recycling and the recycling of all other electrical goods into the bargain. ECS Refining is using a new marketing campaign, designed by the company Pure Matter, which operates out of San Jose, to recycle their old products such as used cell phones and televisions if they’re thinking of upgrading in preparation for the big game. The campaign began broadcasting across radio stations in California last week.

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Recycling electronic goods, including old cell phones, is all the rage these days and many electronics manufacturers have even taken to designing their goods so that they will be easier to dismantle and be ready for recycling when they have reached the end of their natural life. “We’re finding that if you can minimize the number of screws you use to put a product together, you can reduce your assembly time and cost,” noted Panasonic’s director of environmental affairs David Thompson, in an interview earlier in January. “Plus, at the end of life, you will be able to reduce your disassembly time and cost. It sounds rather prosaic, I suppose, but it’s something that’s probably very basic to solving these types of challenges.”

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North America’s biggest cell phone recycling scheme, Call2Recycle, has added a new member to its Board of Directors. The company announced yesterday the appointment of John Bradford, currently serving as the chief innovations officer for Interface Americas, Division of Interface Inc, to the Board of Directors of RBRC, the company which manages Call2Recycle.

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Four youths have been arrested in Nagpur, India, for breaking into a store and then attempting to sell cell phones they had stolen in order to pay back gambling debts. The four teenagers, all between the ages of sixteen and seventeen – which makes them legal minors in India – were arrested by police when sub-inspector Ashok Deotale saw them loitering around a pan kiosk at Sahakar Nagar. When the teens acted suspiciously when confronted with routine questions, police brought them back to the station for further questioning and the group was soon spilling their guts about their crime.

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A six year old school student decided to help save the gorillas by launching a cell phone recycling scheme in her elementary school after a visit to Cincinnati Zoo. Alaina Spencer wrote a letter to her principal, Jean Hartman of Waynesville Elementary School, asking her to get the school to set up a cell phone recycling process to help protect gorillas. “Cell phones have a mineral that miners have to dig for. The mine is in the gorilla’s habit and the miners have to cut down gorilla’s homes,” the six year old wrote in her letter. Alaina, the daughter of Holli and Blaine Spencer, was writing about mountain gorillas in Eastern Congo, where gorillas habitats are indeed being cut down to facilitate mining for the mineral coltan, which is used in the batteries of cellular phones. “If they have to move, they might get cold and die,” the six year old says. “They might not get the plants they need.”

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The rate of recycling of old cell phones and rechargeable batteries has hit a new high, according to Call2Recycle. The company, which remains the only free used cellular phone and battery collection program in the whole of North America, says that its overall collections increased by over ten percent in 2010, establishing a new record for growth for the program. Via its network of more than thirty thousand business, municipal and retail partners, Call2Recycle picked up more than six and a half million pounds of used cell phones and rechargeable batteries last year. The biggest increase came in the Canadian province of British Columbia, which increased its recycling rate by a simply staggering four hundred and twenty percent. Statistics for the recycling of batteries in Canada in general show that across the country the rate increased by around eighty one percent, with a fifty nine percent in the province of Ontario which, along with British Columbia, was the target of an expansion of the Call2Recycle program as of July 1 last year to include all kinds of household batteries.

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How much is my cell phone worth? It might be worth a lot.

At Sell Cell, it is our job to help you get the most money for your old cell phone. That is what we do. But while getting money for your cell is great; the truth is, that old cell phone is worth more than the cash it brings.

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Mercer Elementary School is looking a little green as a result of its new cell phone recycling scheme, being headed by a bunch of third graders. Just before the Christmas holidays, the students of teacher Mary Lou Van Eman and Dana Olsen, the school’s reading recovery teacher, began to draw up their plans for a new cell phone recycling program. The third grade class has managed to get the whole of Mercer Elementary School involved with the project and as of Friday, over two hundred used cell phones have already been handed in. Third graders Dylan Nugent and Claire Steinbrunner say that newer used cell phones will be refurbished, given new chips and sent to island countries such as Haiti, while those old cell phones that are somewhat beyond refurbishing will be smelted and then recycled in other ways. The program, the main emphasis of which is on “Going Green” will carry on until the end of this week.

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