More and more communities in the United States are getting involved in the recycling of old cell phones and other electronic goods as concern over the amount of electrical waste generated each year continues to mount.

When it comes time to upgrade to a new cell phone, you may want to think about disposing of your old cell phone properly. This could mean donating it, trading it in, or selling it. Nevertheless, while donating it seems pretty straight forward and trading it in only requires your cell phone service provider, who buys cell phones?

A concert is being staged in Northern Illinois to help promote a recycling collection event, in the hope that the show will further encourage people to bring and drop off their old cell phones and other items such as batteries and ink cartridges. ‘Reuse-a-palooza’, as the concert and recycling event has been named, is being hosted by the Northern Illinois University Environmental Alliance (also known as The Green Peas). This will feature no less than twelve acts on the bill, including the likes of Grateful Dead tribute band DOSE, along with Jack Mack, CPW Rovers, two late night DJ sets and even a spoken word artist in the form of Emanuel Vinson.

A cell phone became an unlikely hero following a shooting that occurred during a robbery in Cleveland in the United States on Tuesday. Sixty-nine year old John McCurley was working in his shop, John’s Used Auto Parts on Meech Street, when a gunman walked into the store and demanded money. Sources say the gunman panicked when a customer, forty-seven year old Doug Jones, walked into the store, shot McCurley and ran for it. Amazingly, however, it seems that a handily placed cell phone situated on McCurley’s person may have deflected the course of the bullet and actually saved the man’s life.

One United States Senator is pushing for new laws restricting the authorities’ right to track people via their cell phones and other such technologies without first obtaining a search warrant. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) believes that new ground rules need to be in place for protecting the privacy of the average American citizen

Do you think you have wiped the personal data from your old cellular phone before passing it on? Think again. A British study examining old cell phones found that more than fifty percent of them still had personal data accessible even after being wiped, with everything from bank account details, friends’ telephone numbers and email addresses, credit card PIN numbers and much more besides, still stored on the phones, despite their former owners’ best efforts.

Cell phone firm, Digital Phone Company, is getting into the cell phone recycling business after cutting a deal with 20:20 Mobile, which means it will now be able to provide such a service in-house. Digital Phone Company, which is based in East Anglia in the United Kingdom, will be able to provide customers with the ability to hand in their old cell phones for recycling at till points in no less than eleven of its stores, with those who hand in handsets receiving either free accessories or a discount on a new mobile to replace their old cellular phone, depending on the value of the item being recycled. Digital Phone Company, which will be paying a set rate for each recycled phone, is hoping the scheme will boost sales and increase revenue.

Cell phones could be recharged in seconds rather than hours if a new device designed by researchers at the University of Illinois in the United States happens. The device is a 3D nanostructure that could give users the power to recharge cell phones and laptop computers in just a few seconds using high charge lasers and defibrillators, according to a report in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.