Core77

I keep my old cell phones, then again, almost everything interests me and spikes my curiosity. I've taken old phones apart, breaking pieces to discover how they're wired, just to see the circuit boards, to see how they are manufactured, etc. Even when I was a kid, rather than throw an old electronic device away, I'd put it in the 'junk drawer', a drawer specifically used to store old broken artifacts. Then on a random lazy Sunday, out come the dismantling (read; smashing) tools. One logical explanation for the poor numbers of battery recycling, is the fact that it requires a small amount of thought and a small amount of action. I'd imagine for every ten batteries made, two are recycled. That's just my logical guess based on my experience being alive. The only way I can see battery recycling truly succeeding is if all batteries come with a stamp affixed to the battery itself, and an address to where to send the battery to. Then, there may be a slight increase in recycling. However, no amount of virtuous patting on the back will lead to better consumer dependent recycling programs unless there is a strictly regulated government program that fines those who do not recycle their batteries (or other recyclables for that matter). This could potentially take another decade or so, as many of the major cities I've lived in, here in the US, don't even have a recycling programs.

thoughts:
1-keeping old phone as backup
2-too expensive to trash, yet too old to sell for $$$
3-underground plot to take over _______ (whatever?)

Why do we keep our old cell phones?

1) They still work and it's a waste to throw them away.
2) They could be sold still but it's too much work.
3) Nobody is collecting them - no recycling policy.
4) They could be sent to friends/relatives in poorer countries.
5) You want to have a back-up phone for the case you loose/dislike/give away/don't get along with your new mobile phone.
6) We just can. We don't need the money.
7) It's too personal to give somebody else in a used state.
8) You might collect cell phones.

There are some of my reasons and guesses.

I believe it is because Europeans have a great appreciation for what is old and wonderful. What goes for architecture, furniture, jewelry and art might also have been assimilated to technology. A well designed phone is a piece of art, why should it be thrown away?

After a year or two it becomes a great challenge to find a new battery for your old phone. Since you cannot find the battery to keep your art alive, and you have one that works, although maybe not as well as it once did, why would you give up possession of it? I personally would not.

Surely europeans are more sentimental, romantic, nostalgic... A certain cell-phone I believe represents a specific period of our life... It actually shows how this object, yet superficial at first sight, is really a symbol of our relationships life, our loves, our moments, etc. Its like a picture of ourself.

(From a north american guy that somehow became european, maybe).

People of the United States never experienced the forced frugality of the Second World War which has led to the disposable society there which translates nicely if a recycling program exists for batteries. I suspect Asian economies don't even know what recycling is having lived there too!

1.as a backup of phone numbers.
2.takes to long to delete all.
3.as backup if new phone fails.

Hei..A comment to what you wrote...I believe the reason behind not recycling batteries is because we know they are harmful for the environment so we do not dare to throw it in the usual garbage, but nobody gives you the information of what actually to do with it. We all know it is supposed to be disposed of somehow but not sure how or where. Who do you give it to? So...we just leave them in the drawer, for "few days" untill we try and figure out what to do with it. Few days turn into weeks, and months...Before you know it you are stuck with 4-5 old phones and the phone graveyard just keeps growing.(Especially because their quality is so bad that most of them you buy broken)

There may be more of a mentality to keep items that they have replaced around in case a need comes along. The rational always seemed to be that this kind of resourcefulness was a behavior learned from WW2 (and afterwards) then passed down to the next generation.
I'd say more likely this simply may be phone-specific. Most European pre-pay phone plans only charge for outgoing calls- you can receive calls for free. When I lived in Holland, I had quite a few friends that would just go from one hand-me-down phone to the next, essentially for free, by using pre-pay sim cards that have no balances and only receiving calls. There may be just enough of a need to make it worthwhile keeping an old phone in the drawer for when a foreign relative visits.

It's funny to think that WWII tought us plucky europeans to hold onto our mobiles...

WWII, at least in the UK, pretty much saw the birth of the concept of recycling on a huge national scale.

http://www.worldwar2exraf.co.uk/
Online%20Museum/Museum%20Docs/helping%20the%20war%20effort.html

But as soon as peace broke out we happily went back to heaving everything into a landfill site. Recycling was seen as a wartime necessity and soon forgotten - but we just couldn't shake that phone-hoarding instinct, could we?

I think people are basically lazy with regards to recycling. Within a 100 metres of my flat I can recycle:

- Paper
- Organic waste
- Batteries
- Plastics
- Metal

All of which I do, normally on the way to do something else. To recycle my phone I'ld have to drive to somewhere on the outskirts of town (which maybe the starting point of another Euro vs. U.S. debate - it's commonly known over here that Americans drive everywhere! Maybe they have phone recycling bins next to the speaker-thing at the Krusty Burger drive-thru?!).

So, basically, my old phones are lying in a drawer, along with a first-generation iBook, a couple of round Macintosh mice, a HandSpring, a SCSI Zip Drive (100MB!), and an Apple Newton (in increasing order of age).

When nothing else fits in, I'll probably chuck it all in the boot and drive to the recycling center (although I think I'll hang on to the Newton).

I'm not sure whether this is really only a European thing, but I am a European and I only keep my old phone when it is not going to make much money in a second-hand market. In this case it can indeed come in handy to have a backup phone in case the new one breaks down.

As it has been said before, keeping one for backup is handy. Also my old phones get passed down the line to parents. Reuse is far more efficient than recycling and also effects the main body of the phone, not just the battery.

I live in the UK. I tend to give my old phones away if possible, and hang on to them if not. Why? I guess it seems wrong and wasteful to throw it in the trash, but there's no proper recycling /collection system for them that I'm aware of. Perhaps this is something phone manufacturers need to get better with round here.

90% of Europeans have not faced the forced frugality of WWII, so I don't think that's it.

I know for me, the reason I have a sack of batteries is that I don't know where to take them. The only battery recycling drop box I know of is in Lasalle, at least a 45 minute drive or 1h 15 min. subway ride away in a neighborhood I never have need to visit. Therefore, I save batteries for a few years before getting them to recycling.

I think a good idea would be an internet/print recycling guide that would direct consumers to places for recycling of odd objects. Computers, monitors, TVs, batteries, fluorescent bulbs (mercury people!), old smoke alarms (supposedly radioactive), batteries. I don't know where to take most of this stuff, but I know enough to NOT want to toss it in the ground.

Help!

If my phone breaks and needs to be repaired, the phone my service provider gives me to use until the old one comes back is generally really old and rubbish, so it makes sense to hold onto the old ones I have (I get a free new one each year). I won't throw away my old phones because they're not broken!

People, and the frugal Dutch in particular (speaking as a Dutchman), seem to like keeping old stuff around in case it might be useful (no sense in throwing something away if it hasn't been worn out completely: it it's not broken, it means you haven't gotten every last bit of use out it yet, right?).

I imagine it also has something to do with the way the cellphone market works: it mostly focuses marketing on attracting fashion-sensitive consumers in their teens and twenties, since they are more likely to quickly swap a phone for a newer, more fashionable model (this seems to be less so for the 'professional' user, who is probably more interested in functionality and dependability). Promoting this behaviour (i.e. making people believe they're dorks for not having the latest model) means that more and more cellphones become obsolete while still in perfect working order.

In terms of Dutch mentality, something will need to be gained from giving up an obsolete but functioning cellphone, if people are to turn in their stash. Collecting phones for charity seems to work, and people are certainly willing to part with their phone in exchange for a discount on their new phone (I know I was).

As for the European Battery Recycling Association's wonderment: they can be perfectly willing to increase the recycle rate, but if the EU is foolish enough to just demand certain rates without offering the legislation needed to achieve that effect, the EU's and EBRA's efforts and concerns will have little effect. What I'm getting at, is that I think the time is right to overcome the cellphone industries (powerful) objections and force them to take responsibility for their products.

As I mentioned before, taking in old phones in exchange for a discount seems to persuade people to part with their old phones. Currently, this is being used every now and then by individual shops as a promotional tool, but the system could also be used on a much larger scale by the cellphone companies themselves. Being forced (since it will cost them money) by law to recover their products, it seems to me that the easiest way of doing so, would be to persuade their customers to turn in their old phones as soon as they buy new ones.

The answer is very simple, but it takes someone aware of BOTH culture's cell phones to make the connection.

ALL european cell phones have something known a a SIM card, holding their phone number, phone book, and other phone related info (these can be found in US cell phones provided by T-mobile). Sim cards can be moved from phone to phone easily. Making it so that no cell phone is ever rendered useless, the way an American phone is when the service is moved.

So when europeans answer simply that they keep it as a back up they are saying everything. They have the OPTION to keep a backup phone because their old phones aren't rendered USELESS by money-grubbing phone companies who try to keep the technology under wraps in the US.

Unfortunately, they have succeeded.

European phone providers have a different approach than those in the US. Only crazy people pay for phones in Europe. The provider companies begin offering free perks from day one that you 'invest' in their company. To keep your business, they offer you a new phone each time you renew your contract. A lot of Europeans have a pile of phones that have only expired in freshness. They are still working, but why not use the coolest, free-est next best thing. In the US a provider is not quite as generous. So Americans are more likely to keep a phone until they run it into the grave.

PS. Please don't take away free phones in Europe, just give more perks if we recycle!!

I am an American and I have old phones and gadgets lying in a drawer. maybe europe's cell phone keep sake craze is actually normal, and it is american's in ability to trash everything that should be top concern. we are a country of waste and a country of cars - cars that drive us 45 minutes to get a new battery.

I Have every phone I've every owned pretty much... One reason is that in the UK sometimes you can get a free new phone or about �50 cash off if you hand in an old phone - but you dont want to hand in you phone before last because it might still wok as a back up, so you can hand in a REALLY old phone. I just like to see how things change over the time. Smaller smaller, bigger, colour, smaller bigger 3g, camera add on, smaller internal camera, smaller, bigger keyboard etc.

Also if you throw away the battery then the phone is useless - might as well keep them together in a drawer.