How To Run A Cell Phone Collection Drive Using Twitter

Twitter has been the focus of much attention lately as celebrities, politicians, and marketers have flocked to the site to spread their messages to the world 140 characters at a time. If you're running a charity or non-profit, can you benefit from having a Twitter account? More importantly, can you use Twitter to gather support for your organization, raise funds, or run a community initiative like a cell phone recycling drive?


What is Twitter?

Twitter is a free micro-blogging platform in which users can broadcast their messages to their followers on the site. Each tweet (Twitter message) must be 140 characters or less in length and may contain any information - a remark, a quote, an answer to someone's question, a news item, or a link to a web page. So, is it a numbers' game - the more people following you on Twitter the larger the potential audience for your message? While a sizable following on Twitter is important, you will soon discover that the quality of your followers matters more than the number of people or accounts following you.



Why use Twitter?

Twitter is being used by over 6 million people on the planet today. Granting your charity or non-profit doesn't really need to reach that many people, delivering your message to just a small fraction of that vast audience has the potential to expand support for your organization exponentially. Twitter is continuing to grow at a rapid pace - it is expected to grow to 18 million users by 2010. It has already established its reach, relevance, and influence over a large global audience. If your charity or non-profit is not yet using Twitter, why not?

Watch: Twitter Tutorial - Getting Started



Building your followers

The bottomline question for anyone wanting to run a successful promotion on Twitter is influence. How many people among your followers will "retweet" or resend your message to their own followers?

This is where the quality of your followers becomes strategically important. Someone with 50,000 followers may be a lot less influential than someone like Dr. Mani (@drmani),a surgeon in India working to provide much-needed heart surgeries to underpriveleged children. Dr. Mani has only 4,000 or so followers, but these are people who believe in what he's doing and will retweet Dr. Mani's messages to their own followers. As a result, his messages reach hundreds of thousands if not millions of Twitter users.

So, how do you create an army of followers/evangelists/partners on Twitter?

One word: relationships.

Social media sites may be a very fast-paced medium of communication, but the people using these sites still value personal relationships and authenticity. Send out tweets that are relevant to your organization or industry, provide value, answer questions, respond to direct messages, thank people for retweeting your posts.

Be interested in others, engage in conversations, provide useful links. There are so many ways, but the main thing is to build relationships with people who know you, trust you, and will help you out on any initiative - like a cell phone recycling drive - you might want to promote on Twitter. Reach out to influentials or people with huge following, they can greatly help you if they're sold to what you're doing and what you're trying to achieve.


Running your cell phone recycling drive

Running a cell phone recycling drive using Twitter is relatively easy and very effective if you've already established credibility and trust among your followers. If you've already been providing valuable links and information to your followers, you can readily insert in-between messages promoting your drive, without antagonizing anyone.

Create a landing page in your site in which you describe what the drive is all about, why you're doing it, and who will benefit from it. You may also want to include some forms to capture subscriber or supporter information or addresses of people requesting mailing labels (if you're providing those). Don't forget YOUR call to action and to mention who can help you with the initiative - is it for everyone, just people from the US, or just people from a certain city or state?

When you've created this page, you may now start sending out messages on your Twitter account to direct people to your cell phone recycling drive page. Don't send promotional messages every hour, just because you're excited about your drive. The easiest way to lose followers on Twitter is to spam them incessantly with self-promotional messages. One or two messages a day is enough. If you have quality followers, you can be sure your message will be viewable to a good number of people, which hopefully will translate to more support for your cell phone drive.



As you've probably noticed, running a cell phone recycling drive for your charity or non-profit is just one example of the myriad number of ways you can use Twitter. The popularity of social media sites virtually exploded overnight, and everyone in business is just starting to react. It will serve well those people who benefit from your non-profit or charity work, if your organization can establish a presence and grow on Twitter.

Follow Michael Arms on Twitter.

Michael Arms contributes cell phone recycling and other articles to the Pacebutler Recycling blog. You can sell, donate, or recycle cell phones through Pacebutler Corporation, an Oklahoma-based cell phone recycling and refurbishing company.

Author: Michael Arms
Source: How To Run A Cell Phone Collection Drive Using Twitter (Amazines)

How To Run A Cell Phone Collection Drive For Your Charity or Non-Profit

Every charity organization or non-profit seems to be doing cell phone or computer collection drives these days. Is it still worthwhile for your organization to collect old cell phones to help raise funds?

The answer, of course, is an unqualified yes.

One hundred million cell phones are discarded every year in the US - just about 30% of these used phones are recycled or sent back to the manufacturers. The remaining 70% or so are reported as lost, given to friends, thrown in trash bins, or hidden in drawers. There's a huge supply of old cell phones out there and mobile phone trading companies, like Pacebutler Corporation of Edmond, Oklahoma, are still paying top dollar (as much as $75 per piece) for those old phones.

Door to door collection

Along with placing drop boxes and pasting notices in strategic public places, door-to-door collection is the traditional way of running cell phone collection drives. The advantage of this method is that you get to build relationships with the members of your community through person-to-person interaction and help spread your message (if that is a goal) while doing your used phone collection activities. Your results (total number of used cellular phones collected) using this method will be limited by the size of your community or the available personnel doing the legwork.


Working with students and social groups

Working with student groups or social clubs in your city or community will yield better results than the door-to-door method described above. Here, you are leveraging the reach and network of a larger group to help you collect used cell phones for your fund raising - more than what you can normally achieve going about it on your own.

Arrange to speak before the student body or the PTA in your local school and do a compelling presentation about your activities and advocacy and how these are helping people better their lives. Don't forget the call to action at the end of your presentation, telling them about your planned cellular phone collection drive and how their association or student body can help you.

The underlying message is that they're not merely assisting you collect old mobile phones but helping you feed the children, save rainforests, protect coral reefs, or whatever it is that your charity or non-profit does.

Watch: Raise money for your organization by collecting cell phones!




Working with a cell phone recycling or trading company

Since they will be paying for the shipping costs, you should contact the cell phone recycler or trader beforehand, preferably before you start your collection program. This the stage where you can negotiate special pricing with them, which isn't hard to obtain if you tell them of the large number of phones you expect to collect and sell to them on a regular basis. You can also ask for help with the flyers, collection boxes, and posters - they will only be too happy providing you these support materials since you're doing business with them.


Sending your collected phones to the trading or recycling company

Mobile phone trading companies, like Pacebutler Corporation, have online price lists for you to check before sending the phones in bulk to them. If you have the time, I also suggest you find out the actual price of the cell phones that you have and come up with a rough estimate of the total worth of your collected used phones, to temper expectations and prevent any conflict in the future. While some models may fetch a buying price as high as $75 per piece, many old ones out there are priced to just around a dollar or lower per piece. Traders will not pay for non-working phones or those that are too old to be of any use.


Done right and done regularly, cell phone collection drives can be an important source of funds for you. Millions of cell phone are thrown away and wasted every year, collecting just a fraction of these can make a significant difference in the finances of any non-profit or charity.


Michael Arms writes about recycling facts and other topics for the Pacebutler Recycling Blog. You can sell, recycle, or donate cell phones to charity and non-profit through Pacebutler Corporation, a US-based cellular phone trading and recycling company.

Author: Michael Arms
Source: How To Run A Cell Phone Collection Drive For Your Charity or Non-Profit (Article Dashboard)

Photo Credit: The Siren

How to Donate Cell Phones To Charity or Non-Profit

Every year, 100 million cell phones are replaced or discarded in the United States. Less than 20% of this total are recycled or sent back to the manufacturers - the rest are lost, thrown to trash bins, or kept in drawers.


Why donate or recycle cell phones?

Cell phones are an important source for recyclable materials like plastic, glass, silver, gold, and coltan. Throwing away these old phones is basically equivalent to throwing away precious resources that could otherwise be reused to manufacture new cellular phones and other products.

A grimmer aspect to cell phone recycling is the toxicity of some of the metals found in cell phones. Once deposited in landfills, dangerous chemicals leaching out of old phone casing and batteries like brominated fire retardants (BFR), cadmium, lead, and mercury have the potential to contaminate nearby underground water sources. These chemicals have been known to cause cancer, brain damage, and nervous system disorders, among a host of other illnesses.


Donate cell phones to charity or non-profit

Donating your used mobile phone to your favorite charity is a most viable option worth considering. There are many charities, non-profit, or informal community- and school-based groups that are always collecting used phones across the country. Most of these organizations are involved in food relief, rehabilitation, international education, health, environment, and domestic violence prevention programs.

By donating your used cellular phones to any one of these entities, you're basically turning something - that would have been useless otherwise - into a tool to help these groups do their beneficial work. That old cell phone you're planning to chuck into the trash bin or stash away in your drawer might just help someone out there today.


Tax-deductible donations

If your dropping off or donating your old mobile directly to the non-profit, you may want to ask for a receipt from them, which can then be attached to your April filing to get the corresponding tax deduction. Not all groups or non-profit are qualified to receive tax-offsetting donations, you just have to ask. Otherwise, it's as simple as mailing or dropping that old phone in a collection box in your community.


Watch: The Secret Life Of Cell Phones



Where to donate cell phones?

It's up to you - most of the mainstream non-profit organizations today have some kind of a cell phone collection program to help generate funds. If you're not sure where to make a used or old phone donation, here are some places you can go to:

Local groups. Look around, check posters or online community updates. Many of these groups are based in schools, churches, and social clubs. Are there kids from the nearby school going around collecting old phones door-to-door for their chosen cause or charity? Is your church conducting a fund drive to replace the old sound system? There are always many opportunities to donate and help locally.

Environmental non-profit. These are groups that are involved in environmental advocacy and conservation. Usually, the group will set aside a certain percentage of the proceeds from your cell phone donations to fund a specific environmental project - like gorilla conservation, coral reef protection, or rainforest-related projects.

Old cell phones for victims of domestic violence. Violence against women and children is the ugly underbelly of modern homes. Oftentimes, women and children who are victims of abuse in their own homes flee to protect themselves and seek help, with nothing but the clothes on their back. Organizations providing refuge to these victims are constantly in need of old cellular phones these people can use to contact other family members or seek legal help.

Cell phone for soldiers. Non-profits who are working with members of the military and their families are also in need of used cellular phone donations. Proceeds from the used phones they're able to collect and sell to recyclers are used to purchase mobile phone cards to help soldiers stationed overseas communicate with their loved ones back in the US.

Health advocacy. Non-profits working for health advocacy often provide support to the victims of catastrophic diseases like cancer, leukemia, etc. and their families. They also collect second-hand mobile phones to help fund their conntributions to research facilities that are working to find the cures for these diseases.

Children's organizations. These are non-profits involved in feeding, providing shelter and basic necessities, and educating children in needy communities here in the US and abroad. Organizations like "Feed The Children" are collecting used phones through their online partner, Pacebutler Corporation, to help fund their work on behalf of these disadvantaged children.

As you can see, there are a lot of groups out there that you can work with, to make a difference in the lives of others. whatever organization you choose to help today, you can be sure that your old cellular phones are put to good use. It's easy and you know that it's the right thing to do.

Donate cell phones to a charity or non-profit, today.


Michael Arms contributes cell phone recycling and other articles to the Pacebutler Recycling Blog. You can sell, recycle, or donate cell phones through Pacebutler Corporation, a US-based cell phone trading company.

Author: Michael Arms
Source: How To Donate Cell Phones To Charity or Non-Profit (GoArticles)

Photo Credit: Image used originally courtesy of joelogon on Flickr and used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Top 7 Benefits of Recycling

Recycling is a process - a series of activities, if you will, that includes: the collection and sorting of waste materials, the processing of these materials to produce brand new products, and the purchase and use of these new products by consumers.

Recycling is more optimized and efficient if we practice the three R's of waste management: reduce, reuse, recycle.

Reducing waste that otherwise get's carted off to the recycling centers or landfills is achieved through an intentional decrease in our purchases and consumption,composting of organic waste, and flat refusal to use disposable items like polystyrene and plastic bags. Reusing materials serve to lengthen a particular item's usage. Examples of this are: repurposing glass bottles into artistic lamp shades, giving your old cell phones to family or friends for reuse, and upcycling street trash bins into community swimming tubs.


But, why recycle? Why go through all the trouble of recycling your garbage? How does recycling benefit us and the environment?

Let's review the benefits of recycling:

Recycling Helps Protect The Environment

Recycling sharply reduces the amount of waste that gets deposited in our landfills or burned in incinerator plants. Engineered landfills in most cities are designed to contain toxic chemicals leaking from decaying solid waste from reaching our water systems. But, for how long? Already, we're getting reports of dangerous chemicals contaminating water supplies in some cities. Burning solid waste for electricity may be efficient, but we pay the price in terms of increased carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.


Recycling Helps Conserve Limited Resources

To put this benefit in proper perspective, let's consider this statement from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection: "By recycling over 1 million tons of steel in 2004, Pennsylvanians saved 1.3 million tons of iron ore, 718,000 tons of coal, and 62,000 tons of limestone. Through recycling newsprint, office paper and mixed paper, we saved nearly over 8.2 million trees."

Resources like oil and precious metals (gold, silver, bauxite, copper, etc.) are all finite resources that will be exhausted, sooner or later. Cell phone and computer manufacturers, like Dell and Apple, recognize the need for a steady supply of raw materials - most are active in buy-back programs to recycle materials from used products.


Recycling Promotes Energy Efficiency

Recycling is far more efficient, in terms of energy consumption, than producing something out of fresh raw material. Done on a nationwide scale, this could lead to significant reduction in our energy costs. The energy required to extract , process, and transport metal from a mine to a refinery is obviously much greater than what's required to recycle metal from used products - it costs more energy to manufacture a brand new aluminum can from fresh material than to make 20 cans out of recycled materials!


Recycling Helps Build A Strong Economy

Every cost-reduction, energy efficiency, materials conservation, and job generation benefit of recycling adds up to help build a strong economy for our country. Recycling, done on a country-wide scale, has a huge positive impact on the economy. There was dip in the price of recyclables last year when the financial crisis started, but it is testimony to the resiliency of this industry that prices are now back to pre-crisis levels - a recovery that's well ahead than most other industries. Jobs are being generated and city and town governments are enjoying huge savings in electricity, garbage collection, and landfilling costs.


Recycling Creates Jobs

Recycling generates more jobs than landfilling or incinerating waste. That's a benefit we can't lose sight of, in this time of recession and high unemployment rate. Let's consider the disposal of 10,000 tons of solid waste: burning it for electricity will create 1 job; collecting and dumping this on a landfill will create 6 jobs; processing the waste for recyling will generate 36 jobs!


Recycling Builds Community

People band together and build communities around common causes, issues, and advocacies. Recycling is no different. In many neighborhoods and cities across the country, we see concerned citizens working together in recycling initiatives, environment lobby groups, and free recycling groups. If you're new to recycling or environmental advocacy, go find a local group to work with. Staying the course is more fun and rewarding when you have other enthusiasts cheering you on.


Recycling Can Be Financially Rewarding

If you just want to make money to get by in these hard times or start a home business, recycling is a profitable option. It's relatively easy and inexpensive to start a home-based recycling business. You just need to plan on what material (cell phone, paper, or metals, etc.) you intend to collect, plan storage, contact the recycling plant for pricing, and you're set to start collecting recyclables and reselling these to the recycling facility at a decent profit. The large recycling giants in the US all started as home businesses years ago - you can do it, too - those guys just recognized the huge potential of this business well ahead of the crowd.


The benefits of recycling to each of us, to society, and to the environment are our compelling reasons why we recycle. For many of us, recycling has become second nature - a way of life. It's a small but extremely vital component of environmental protection - without recycling, all our efforts to protect the planet will be less effective, even futile. Let's all continue recycling.

Watch: The Benefits of Recycling



Michael Arms contributes articles on recycling and other topics to the Pacebutler Recycling and Environment blog. Pacebutler is a cell phone recycling and trading company in the United States. You can sell, donate, or recycle cell phones through Pacebutler.

Author: Michael Arms
Source: Top 7 Benefits of Recycling (Ezine Articles)
Photo Credit: Tomasz G. Sienicki. Image used under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch - A Primer

By: Michael Arms

In recent months, media outlets and some celebrities have turned the spotlight on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Last August, a team of scientists, oceanographers, researchers, and ocean-lovers set sail in an expedition, known as the Project Kaisei, to the area to find out more about the severity of this threat to the ocean ecosystem.


What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

The Great Pacific Patch is a large swath of the ocean, estimated to be twice the size of Texas containing as much as 100 million tons of plastic garbage. In 1997, Captain Charles Moore, a California-based sea captain discovered the area, while passing through on his way home from a sailing race in Asia. The documentation and samples brought back by the researchers of Project Kaisei confirmed our worst fears - the area is much larger than was originally thought, it is filled with so much debris, and it is growing.


How was it formed?

The plastic now trapped in the patch have accumulated gradually through several decades from debris thrown or washed to the sea from the surrounding coastlines and from passing ships. This is garbage coming from every country in the northern Pacific basin from North America to east Asia to Australia. The garbage is drawn to what is known as the Northern Pacific Gyre, a system of currents in the northern Pacific, forced into the center of the huge vortex, and trapped there by the peripheral circulating currents.


Why should we be concerned?

Recently, a documentary film featuring Sigourney Weaver, explained the gradual acidification of the oceans from uncontrolled carbon dioxide emissions. It is estimated that by 2100, if the trend continues, the oceans' acidity will be twice that of the pre-industrial era, effectively killing much of the marine organisms that form the base of our food chain. The plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is doing that already. It is estimated that a million organisms die each day from ingesting the minute fragments of plastic floating around in this lethal soup. The toxins released by the decaying plastics are also ingested by these organisms that are served on our dinner tables - the plastic we carelessly threw away has come back to us through the food that we eat!


What can we do?

One of the tasks of the Kaisei scientific expedition was to determine the viability of extracting the plastic from this area for commercial recycling. Until that is possible, it would be too expensive for any one country to undertake the clean up of this veritable mess. What could be done at present is to try and reduce, if not stop altogether, the flow of garbage that gets added to the patch each year. We need strict solid waste disposal policies to prevent more garbage from spilling into the ocean. More and more cities are now banning completely the use of plastic bags and polystyrene containers, and this is an important step.

On the individual level, we can intensify recycling and reduce, if not eliminate, our purchases of plastic. BYOB - "Bring Your Own Bag" - is not just a catchy slogan but a significant factor that would greatly help the ocean - if we all do it.


Out of sight, out of mind. That's the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for most of us. But it is real - as real as the plastic keyboard in front of you right now - it is out there growing by the day from all the garbage we throw away so heedlessly.

Time to put a stop to this killing of our ocean. Let's all do our part.

Michael Arms writes about recycling and other environmental topics for the Pacebutler Recycling Blog. Pacebutler Corporation is a cell phone recycling and trading company - you can sell, recycle, or donate cell phones to your preferred non-profit, through Pacebutler.

Article Source:
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch - A Primer
ArticleCat.com

Recycling Facts - A Short Introduction

Guest Post by: Michael Arms of Pacebutler Corporation

The US Environmental Protection Agency characterizes recycling as the "sorting, collecting, and processing materials to manufacture and sell them as new products." In a world confronted by sundry environmental issues like pollution and climate change, largely of our own making, recycling is one sure method to help cleanse the environment and prevent more trash from being piled up in our landfills and worse, in the world's oceans. Being apathetic is not a choice. Below are some recycling facts to help us put in proper focus just how essential recycling is.

Recycling saves energy and resources by trimming down the need for fresh material for manufacturing. It also helps to preserve the environment by reducing solid waste and pollution. It limits the discharge of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by lowering the burning of refuse and the burning of fossil fuel for production.


Recycling facts about plastic

Plastic, an invention of our current profligate society, was previously praised as a revolutionary breakthrough - it even bagged a medal in the World's Fair in London in 1862. It's strong, light, and pliant. Unfortunately, over time, it is this very sturdiness of plastic that has appeared to be an environmental tragedy for us. A hunk of plastic cast off today takes forever to disintegrate, it will endure for at least 500 years before total deterioration.

Envion, a company from Washington D.C., in the U.S., just the other week opened a new plant that's claimed to transform plastic waste into a fuel component. If this is accurate, it could emerge to be the solution to the environment's plastic pollution headache. With this application, it will become sustainable for industrialists to excavate waste dumps and the oceans for plastic to meet the industries' escalating need for more fuel and energy.

We utilize and throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour! Recycling just 26 of these bottles could produce one polyester suit!

Recently, a number of news organizations and prominent personalities have been focusing on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It's estimated to be twice the size of the state of Texas and contains as much as 100 million tons of plastic debris. Due to the action of the sun and sea water, the plastic in the ocean is breaking down into shard-like pieces and are devoured by fish and other marine organisms, which we eat - the plastic we nonchalantly scrapped has come back by way of the food chain to haunt us all.


Recycling facts about paper

Thanks to the Computer Age, old-style dailies are now using less paper to print their Sunday editions. As progressively more readers go to the internet to get the news, venerable franchises like The New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle are now obligated to publish online sites or risk becoming insignificant.

To produce one weekend issue of every broadsheet in the United States, half a million trees were cut down for their pulp to manufacture all that paper. In America, 85,000,000 tons of paper are discarded every year - that's equal to 680 lbs. for every person in this country.

If you have a computer in your house wired to the internet, please cancel ALL subscriptions to hard copy version of your daily or favorite glossy. If only 10 percent of newspapers read and discarded in the US is turned in for recycling, that's tantamount to saving 25 million trees per year.


Recycling facts about metal

Have you seen the YouTube film showing aluminum cans? It's astounding how we squander this precious material by failing to recycle it. The volume of aluminum containers we waste yearly is estimated to be large enough to reproduce all the commercial aircraft in this country three times a year!

Yearly, we go through approximately 80 billion units of aluminum beverage containers, and most of these are dumped in our landfills.

Recycling a single aluminum beverage container is equal to storing electricity that's enough to light up a 100-watt bulb for twenty hours, run a laptop for 3 hours, or watch your favorite TV show for 3 hours.


You can find out more recycling facts on the internet and at school. You may also talk to your city's waste management officer to gather more specific recycling numbers. Recycling is in truth a crucial component in our collective aspiration to defend the environment and make our world a safer and beautiful place to live in. Let's recycle.

Michael Arms writes about recycling facts and other environmental and clean energy topics for the Pacebutler Recycling Blog. Pacebutler Corporation is a U.S. cell phone trading company - you may sell, recycle, or donate cell phones to your favorite charity through Pacebutler.

Getting Plastic Recycling Symbols

Have you ever considered what these embossed marks in plastic containers or appliance parts signify? Once in a while, we find ourselves confused about the purpose of these recycling symbols and their connection to sanitation and health issues.

Plastic recycling symbols indicate the forms of resin utilized to create the material. These designs are fixed following the international Plastic Coding System, and are regularly delineated as a number (from 1 through 7) bounded by a triangle or a plain triangular loop (also known as the Mobius loop), with an acronym of the particular resin used, right below the loop.

Here are short definitions of all of the 7 recycling icons widely used, at present:

1 - PET or PETE (Polyethylene Terephalate Ethylene)

Light weight, low-priced, and easy to create, Polyethylene Terephalate Ethylene is the most prevalent plastic resin in use today. PET is primarily used in soft drink bottles, food containers, and peanut butter containers. It can be remade into car parts, tote bags, carpet, etc. The requirement for this material among recyclers is fairly high, but at the moment, the recycling rate for this material has remained low at 20%.

2 - HDPE (High Density Polyethylene)

High Density Polyethylene is stronger and susceptible to chemical decomposition, this material presents a fairly minimal chance of draining chemicals when used as container for food and drinks. It is chiefly used as containers for everyday household chemicals (shampoos, detergents, etc.), garbage bags, containers for short shelf life food products like yogurt, etc. This can be reused into toys, drainage, plastic lumber, benches, etc.

3 - PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride)

Polyvinyl Chloride has been identified as a health hazard - it has been noted to frequently leach toxins when used as containers. PVC is mainly used for piping, clear food packaging, siding, etc. It contains chlorine and will let off toxins if ignited. PVC should be excluded in food preparation or food packaging. It can be reconstituted into mudflaps, roadway gutters, binders, etc.

4 - LDPE (Low Density Polyethylene )

Low Density Polyethylene is manufactured into squeezable bottles, apparels, carpets, etc. Tough but also stretchable, it is ideal for packaging, insulation, and sealing. LDPE, through many curbside recycling programs, can be reconstituted into trash can liners, plastic lumber, and plastic lumber.

5 - PP (Polypropylene)

Polypropylene is most suited for boiling fluid receptacles and is likewise manufactured into brooms, battery cables, ketchup bottles, etc. PP can be reused into signal lights, battery cables, bicycle racks, etc.

6 - PS (Polystyrene)

Polystyrene is the standard component for insulation and is used in foam products like expanded polystyrene (EPS), commonly known as styrofoam. It is manufactured into disposable food containers, egg cartons, aspirin bottles. PS contains benzene, a human carcinogen and should not be burned. It is reprocessed into insulation, packaging, plant beds, etc.

7 - OTHER (Polycarbonate)

Recycling symbol 7 - OTHER represents materials not belonging to any of the other 6 resin classifications. OTHER may also signify a hybrid resin made up of a mix of those materials. It is widely found in infant feeding containers, milk can liners, camping bottles, computer cases, etc. It can be recycled into plastic timber and other custom-made items.

Not all number 7 plastics are polycarbonate, a few are even fully biodegradable. Polycarbonate has become the axis of a regulatory firestorm in recent years, as it is found to discharge BPA (bisphenol A), a hormonal disruptor that may negatively impact child-bearing and fetal growth.

Plastic recycling symbols are drawn chiefly to assist the technicians in recycling establishments in properly distributing materials for disposal. A rudimentary understanding of these emblems can also serve us in ascertaining if the plastic item were using in our houses are risk-free for us and our families.

Original Article by:
Joseph Campbell
Oklahoma City, 2009

Joseph Campbell is a writer for the Pacebutler Recycling and Environmental blog. Pacebutler Corporation based Edmond, Oklahoma is a US cell phone trading company that pays cash for cell phones, in an online transaction. If you just want to dispose of your old cell phones in an environmentally-friendly manner, you may also recycle cell phones through Pacebutler.

Why Cradle To Cradle Recycling?

Guest post by Michael Arms

Tree huggers are skilled at identifying the negative effect of industrialization on the environment. Industrialists, meanwhile, find conservation advocates to be insensitive to the social and economic roles of industrialization. They contend that if every environmental protection advice is observed thoroughly, it will set us back for decades, technologically and economically.

Both groups view industrial waste and the machineries that we create, as destructive to the environment. The choice is between unchecked industrialization and narrow environmentalism.

Is there another way out of the box? As a matter of fact, there is a third alternative. Cradle to cradle recycling.

Have you heard of the book called “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things" by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, published in 2002? In this visionary book, they assert that recycling, as it is done today, is in reality "downcycling" or "cradle to grave" recycling. We make floating buoys from styrofoam or produce news print out of white paper. The new products we create out of recycled materials are invariably lesser in quality to the original (due to materials degradation or contamination) or utilize just a fraction of it (the rest deposited in the landfills as hazardous waste).


There is no such profligacy in nature. How many cones does a pine tree need to produce in order for a new pine tree to flourish? A thousand, probably tens of thousands. All for a single new baby pine tree. Are those thousand other cones or seeds that failed to become new trees wasted? Certainly, not. They all go back to the ground and decompose to become nutrients to help in the pine tree's next spring cycle. Nature proudly displays sustainable cycles, such as that of the pine tree, everywhere. Nothing in nature is wasted, every seed or cone ultimately helps to sustain the cycle that gets repeated a great number of times.


What if we can adopt nature's way of sustainability and absolutely no waste in our industrial production processes? What if every machinery that we make can be reused, recycled, or totally biodegraded to its organic components? Cradle to cradle is the way to transform "the way we make things" to reflect the highly efficient concept of sustainability in the natural world. How? Imagine designing sustainability into every product. Engineers, architects, and designers will have to provide for after-use product disposition while the product is still in the conceptualization stage. Is the machinery reusable? Are all the parts recyclable? Are the parts, paints, and coatings biodegradable?


A lady who goes to the market considers using plastic bags or paper bags for her groceries. A city council in Europe considers if their town should keep burning coal or use palm oil for electricity generation. In our day-to-day routines, we frequently fall into "lesser of two evils" kind of choices. Plastic will remain for thousands of years and coal is the dirtiest of all the fuels we burn. On the other hand, paper production kills rain forests, and palm oil production kills orangutans. Lesser evils. Since the start of the industrial era, we've been boxed into this appearance of destructive choices.


Cradle to cradle recycling, once it becomes part of our collective wisdom (and the opposition of ill-informed interests is enormous) will probably be the "next industrial revolution." It dispels the chimera of limited options, because when sustainability is an integral component of the product design, we need not make those ridiculous choices. Every item reaching the end of its life-cycle is either reusable, recyclable, or biodegradable. That is cradle-to-cradle recycling.

Michael Arms contributes articles to the Pacebutler Recycling and Environmental blog and maintains several Squidoo lenses on recycling and the environment. Pacebutler Corporation is one of the US-based trading companies which buy used cell phones directly from US cell phone users. You can also donate cell phones to your preferred charity or non-profit through Pacebutler.

Why We Should Recycle Old Cell Phones

Do you throw away your obsolete cellular phones?

For a long time, I was one of those who never had a clue that cellular phones can be recycled. Most people these days have one or a couple of cell phones stored in a closet somewhere. After a while, when we rediscover these cell phones, these will most likely end up in the trash bin, and eventually, in our city’s landfill.

Can there be a more viable, more environmentally-friendly way? Let's recycle our cell phones.

The Great Cell Phone Avalanche

Here are the actual figures about the dismal situation of cell phone recycling in the US at the moment. Every year, 37 million more used cell phones are hidden in our drawers, and 10 million more units get dumped in our landfills. Of the 125 million used phones replaced every year, only 9.4% are recycled. There are now close to a billion total old cell phones in America, today.

Like most e-waste, mobile phones contain metals and chemicals that are extremely lethal to humans. Toxic heavy metals like lead, mercury, and cadmium are found in the circuit boards and batteries of cell phones. Carcinogenic chemicals like brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) are also present in the casing of many cell phones. Lead, one of the most dangerous metals known, has been associated with brain development problems in children and impaired brain functions in adults. Cadmium mixtures are carcinogenic and exposure to this metal can cause liver, kidney (irreversible, and often fatal), respiratory and bone density complications.

Our sanitary landfills are engineered to keep substances leaking from solid waste, but no one can absolutely guarantee that the e-waste, like cell phones, we deposit so nonchalantly, will not contaminate our underground water systems. The probability of this to happen is rather high, we’re basically poisoning our wells every time we dump e-waste into our landfills.

Is there money in Cell Phone Recycling?

If you need instant cash, turning in your old phones for recycling can be quite lucrative. You can do the exchange online, and the phone exchange or refurbishing companies will pay as much as $50 for each phone you send to them. So, how do these companies make money out of the exchange. Simple. They market these phones, for a neat mark-up, to wholesale (usually in lots of 100) buyers in South America or Asia. You earned something from the sale of a used item, while helping bring wireless capability to the developing countries. Think about it.

Umicore, a Belgium-based giant recycling business, harvests precious metals like gold, silver, platinum, copper, and coltan, as well as manufacturing recyclables like glass and plastic from tons of discarded cell phones. They call this process “surface mining.” There’s actually more gold to be found in a ton of junk phones than from 17 tons of gold ores! Less than half of 1% of the e-waste that go through the recycling process can not be returned to the production cycle and is then burned for electricity generation.

Trying to harvest precious metals from your used phones at home is not a sound idea because of the toxic industrial chemicals used in the procedure and the fact that only trace amounts are present in each phone. It takes recycling tons upon tons of discarded cellular phones for the giant recycling companies to make a profit out of it.

How do you recycle cell phones?

Recycle your cell phones through to your favorite charity.

Help your chosen charity or non-profit gather funds for their activities or causes by giving your used cell phones to them. You can even begin your grassroots recycling campaign by gathering used mobile phones in your workplace, town or neighborhood and sending these to refurbishers to benefit your favorite charity. Ask for support, communicate with other people and outfits who are doing the same. Certainly, there’s now a cell phone program currently going on in your community, and help from you would definitely make a huge difference.

Give your old or used phones to someone you know.

Ever come across the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle?” Doubling the usage of a used cellular phone by having a friend or family member to reuse it, may be the fastest and most practical way to recycle. An old phone you’ve replaced for a newer model or because you switched companies, is almost certainly still perfectly usable for 1 or 2 more years. Remember to ask your buddy or relative to recycle the unit properly when the time comes.

Recycle cell phones through recycling and refurbishing companies.

Another method that’s fast and convenient is to recycle your discarded mobile phone in the internet. Mobile phone recycling and refurbishing companies, like Pacebutler Corporation in Edmond, Oklahoma will pay as much as $50 for each cell phone you send them. Just visit their site, find out how much is the actual price of your phone, print out a pre-paid shipping label, and mail your phones. How fast is this process? Usually, you’ll have your money within 4-5 business days after they get your phones.

Recycle cell phones through the manufacturer or service provider.

Cell phone producers are always worried about their supply of production resources. Companies like Nokia, Alcatel, Motorola, as well as service networks like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, all have mobile phone trade-in or repurchase initiatives to make sure that they have a constant source of recyclables for their production cycle. Sending your discarded phones back to them ensures that these units are recycled responsibly. Shipping is usually free, and there are plenty of phone stores who have phone recycle boxes ready.

To quote the US Environmental Agency (EPA), cell phone recycling is an “easy call to make.” If every one contributes, we all can move forward towards improving the phone recycling rate in this country. It’s not just about preserving the environment, [cellular phone recycling also protects our health. Let’s all recycle our cell phones, today.


Pacebutler Corporation, and other online trading and refurbishing companies, buy used phones directly from phone users in the United States. You may also donate cell phones to your favorite non-profit or charity through the facility hosted by Pacebutler.

Joseph Campbell writes about recycling and the environment. He is a regular contributor to the Pacebutler recycling blog.


Credits: Image used originally posted in Flickr by user joelogon and used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Learn How To Improve Concentration Skills

Learning can sometimes be unintentional. Some of us absorb information even without focusing on these facts. Oftentimes we deliberately choose to ignore certain facts only to find out later, that we have, in fact, memorized that very data. Wandering attention, however, may not be the optimum approach if you're aiming to absorb a large amount of data.

Here's an easy exercise to help you improve your attention and enhance memory performance. It's deceptively simple, but if you do it repeatedly and regularly, it can significantly sharpen concentration.

Count the number of "A" from the selection below:

OFTEN the hearts of men and women are stirred, as likewise they are soothed in their sorrows more by example than by words. And therefore, because I too I have known some consolation from speech had with one who was a witness thereof, am I now minded to write of the sufferings which have sprung out of my misfortunes, for the eyes of one who, though absent, is of himself ever a consoler.*

*From the Foreword to Historia Calamitatum: The Story of My Misfortunes by Peter Abelard


Count the number of "E" from the next selection:

Most noble and illustrious drinkers, and you thrice precious pockified blades (for to you, and none else, do I dedicate my writings), Alcibiades, in that dialogue of Plato’s, which is entitled The Banquet, whilst he was setting forth the praises of his schoolmaster Socrates (without all question the prince of philosophers), amongst other discourses to that purpose, said that he resembled the Silenes.*

* From Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais

I hope you enjoyed our little exercise today, make sure to do it 3 to 4 times. You can do this every day, using any text you want and searching for whatever character you like.

Want more? Check this page out for more brain teasers.