Alcoa has joined the Basel Action Network (BAN), the environmental company which is dedicated to promoting the recycling of electronics, including old cell phones. Alcoa has already been recognized as a leader in environmental sustainability, being on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the last nine years in a row. It has signed up for Basel Action Network’s e-Stewards Enterprise, which helps companies to responsibly recycle their electronic waste, including used cell phones.

Just the one company, Hoosiers, donated over fifteen thousand used cell phones to the Verizon Wireless HopeLine program over the course of 2010. The HopeLine program, which was established in order to help survivors of domestic violence in Indiana in the United States, both reuses the old cell phones by giving them to the victims and also recycles them in order to give cash to non profit organizations that try to prevent and raise awareness of domestic violence, in addition to local shelters.

The EU has set new targets for the recycling of e-waste, but at least one recycling company believes they are still just not good enough. At the moment, the EU Environment Council has set collection quotas of four kilograms of electrical and electronic waste, including old cell phones, per person, but is now looking to change those quotas to a percentage of how much electrical equipment is sold instead.

A Newton lawyer has come up with a novel way to try to get the younger generation to not use their cell phones while they are operating a motor vehicle in what could be described as a good old-fashioned bribe. Lawyer Corey Walker and his wife Beth have come up with a scheme to effectively pay young drivers to not use cell phones while they are driving.

Residents of Cheshire are being encouraged to recycle electrical products, including old cell phones, in a bid to cut down on the number of such items ending up in landfills. The newspaper, The Middlewich Guardian, says that the Cheshire West and Chester Council is running a new scheme under the name of ‘Don’t Bin It, Bring It’.

Liberty Tax Service in Minooka in the United States has joined forces with the nationwide cell phone recycling scheme known as Cell Phones for Soldiers for its latest annual collection. All offices of the Liberty Tax Service will be accepting donations of old cell phones, with the company hoping to have collected at least a hundred used cell phones by the fifteenth of next month.

Anyone who uses cell phones or laptop computers knows the frustration of dealing with batteries that always seem to run out of power far too soon. The time has to be spent on recharging before they can be used again.

Moves are underway to block the signals that allow prison inmates to make calls on unauthorized cell phones. California Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate revealed on Thursday that the state was testing technology at certain undisclosed prisons in a bid to block unauthorized cell phone calls being made by prisoners.