Recycle Cell Phones at Kalianna

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Last updated April 12, 2019

Kalianna is a not for profit organization in the Murray Basin region of South Australia, and is devoted to helping disabled people.  Kalianna also offers an electronic recycling program intended to give new life to old cell phones, as well as other electrical items such as computers, photocopiers and televisions.

Ross Weeding, the supervisor of the Recycling Workshop at the Kalianna Workshop, says that everything from copper wiring and motherboards to central processing units and various metals found in televisions, computers and used cell phones are all recycled.  “The employees pull them to pieces, out of that we are able to recycle the wiring and everything else,” Weeding says.  About the only thing the Workshop is unable to deal with are the actual screens on such devices.  “Because of the heavy metals that are in the screens, lead and mercury, we are unable to do anything with them here so we send them off to (elsewhere in) South Australia where they are recycled,” he adds.

Because of that necessity, Kalianna Workshop does charge customers who want to recycle their old cell phones and other electrical items, with any money earned from recycling also pumped back into the Workshop.  “If we can get a ton of CPUs, that is worth $70,000(Australian dollars), but you need a lot to make a ton,” Weeding points out.  “That money is reinvested back into the Workshop and we try to better the Workshop and conditions for everybody here.”