Recycling (Going Green)

[Josh-BBY Retired: Community Connector]

At Best Buy® we want to empower your passions. We do that in a big way with the electronics that we sell but what about the electronics we aren’t selling? Specifically we offer some support to products you didn’t even purchase from us: Recycling. You can bring in any cell phone or PDA that you might have laying around and recycle it in our kiosk. Why should I recycle my mobile device you might ask? Well in the spirit of the EPA National Cell Phone Recycling Week I will share some information with you about the dangers of not recycling your cell phone.

• You are throwing away gold, literally: There are many precious metals inside cell phones and PDAs. The EPA estimates that for every million handheld devices recycled we save 75 pounds of gold, 722 pounds of silver, 33 pounds of palladium and 35,274 pounds of copper.
• Not only are you saving materials, you are saving new materials: Recycling not only conserves the precious metals and plastics used previously. It also prevents air and water pollution due to creation of new materials.
• It not only consumes energy to use your phone: It takes energy to make new phones too. The EPA estimates that if we recycled all of the 100 million cell phones that are phased out by new phones; we would save enough energy to power 18,500 U.S. homes for a year.
• Save some green: The EPA says that the reduction of greenhouse gasses caused by recycling the 1 million of the cell phones mentioned above would offset driving over 1,000 cars a year!

This year alone the EPA estimates that 50 million cell phones will end up in a landfill. Less than 20% of cell phones will be recycled. It is up to us to make a difference and help the Earth. Find out how you can make a difference at www.bestbuy.com/recycling or at http://epa.gov/cellphones.