How is California doing with recycling cell phones?
Cell phones have become a common item to most Americans. It is estimated that 17.7 million cell phones were sold in California in 2007.
Most cell phones contain toxic metals (such as lead and cadmium) that may create environmental harm when disposed of. These devices must be handled as a hazardous waste and not thrown away in the municipal landfill.
To encourage the recycling of cell phones, the Legislature passed and the Governor signed The California Cell Phone Recycling Act of 2004, which requires retailers to accept all cellular phones from consumers for recycling. In order to determine how effective the program is, DTSC publishes the recycling rate on this page for each year.
Recycling rate for the year 2007
Phones returned for recycling (est.) 3 million =
Phones sold in California (est.) 17.7 million
iSupply, which tracks the electronic industry, estimates that the cell phone recycling rate is approximately 15 percent, nationally, which means California did a great job recycling cell phones last year.
What do the numbers mean?
DTSC calculated California’s estimated cell phone recycling rate using information gathered from retailers, recyclers, national sales figures for cell phones, and California’s percentage of those sales. Retailer and recycler take-back programs collected approximately 3 million units. DTSC obtained 2007 United States cell phone sales data (number of units sold) from the NDP Group (data were available for the first three quarters of 2007, and we averaged those three figures to project the fourth quarter sales). We calculated that California accounted for approximately 12% of these sales, since census data indicate California’s population is approximately 12% that of the United States. Therefore, we determined that around 17.7 million cell phones were sold in California in 2007.
Where do we go from here?
With fewer than 1 out of 5 cell phones going into a recycling process, the question is, “Where did the other 4 phones end up?” According to a 2007 national survey on the fate of old cell phones, about a third are “stored away,” while others are given to family or friends, donated to charity, sold, or “lost, stolen, or thrown away” (approximately 10 percent).
Improving how the industry counts phones will increase the accuracy in the reported values. While retailers and manufacturers of cell phones are concerned in protecting our environment, new incentives and more publicity about the Take-Back programs will help motivate the public to get those phones out of the drawers and into the right hands.
