Use It Again » Boots recycling mobiles

Recycling your battery

Alan — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 20:35:36 +0000

Most people know that batteries come with potentially harmful metals like mercury, lead, acid, nickel cadmium, alkaline and other such unpleasant materials. Even if the general public does not know the names of the chemicals, we know there are toxins contained inside that should not be tossed away casually in the bin. If not disposed of in the right way, these chemicals from batteries will certainly contaminate the environment.

A good example of this is a landfill which contains cadmium found in batteries. In this circumstance, the cadmium would eventually seep into the ground, making it possible to infiltrate into the water supply. Naturally, illness and even death would be likely to follow. This is why battery recycling not only benefits the health of the public at large, but also the environment in terms of conservation and purity.

Whether its cell phone batteries, car, or computer batteries, they all need to be disposed of properly. The only difference is that the process of disposal will depend on the type of chemicals found inside the battery. Some regulations are already in place that has reduced the mercury content in widely used batteries. The amount of alkaline in many of them has been cut by 97%. Even with lesser chemical content, it is still unsafe to ignore the recycling of batteries.

These days it is much easier to safely dispose of your old batteries. Years ago, people had to call their local council, that is if the council operated any kind of disposal system. Now a person can drive to the local recycling centre, which is now available to most people within a reasonable distance from their house. A good amount of supermarket chains also have a battery disposal service. Electronic retail stores, repair shops, and even bookstores now offer battery disposal in many locations.

In the UK, the government is not taking chances on people who might be lax in seeing their batteries recycled. In February of 2010 a piece of legislation will become active to enforce recycling batteries. The new law will require retailers who sell more than 70 pounds or 32kg of batteries a year to make free battery collection and recycling available to the general public. Officials aim for the country to have 25% of its batteries that are in circulation to be recycled. This should improve recycling from the meagre 5% of recycled batteries in the country currently.

The European Union is taking a much more aggressive stance in enforcing not only battery recycling, but also the content of the batteries themselves. Their goal is to ban the sale of batteries that have trace amounts of mercury and nickel cadmium. Another part of the EU agreement is that batteries must be labelled clearly with information pertaining to the battery’s shelf life.

The producers of batteries must all be registered and make their batteries removable. This soon to be law has raised the ire of the battery producing industry because they will have to bear the cost of compliance. Moderate voices who have the health of the industry and the health of the environment in mind, hope to introduce an effective comprise.

Money for Christmas, mobile phone recycling

Alan — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 03:25:31 +0000

If you need some extra spending money for Christmas, you might want to consider recycling your old mobile phone. A recent study reveals that the average UK household has over £700 worth of old phones sitting around in drawers and on desktops.

Even your really old phone has a resale value; it could be as low as £1 or as high as £390, depending on the telephone. Smartphones, of course, have the highest resale value and the older you go, the lower the value becomes.

Many families have some recently traded smartphones sitting around the house gathering dust when they could be yielding currency instead. The simple truth is that not nearly enough people think about recycling their phones, even if they are not all that old.

As a matter of course, most service providers are only interested in getting you on network with a new phone. They don’t care what you do with old one and can’t be troubled with bothering to recycle them, even though it would be a worthwhile secondary stream of income.

This leaves the consumer to do it themselves, which is easy. Just get online and type in “mobile phone recycling” and start considering your options.

Boots now recycling mobiles

Alan — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:48:43 +0000

High street chemists, Boots, are now taking mobiles as a way to promote recycling among consumers. Boots is offering those interested a simple way to trade in old mobiles, since you can simply head over to their website, enter the phone model, and then see what your options are.

The website also provides browsers with plenty of useful tips such as how you can recycle other electrical items that previously may have never even crossed your mind as reusable. Of course, there are plenty of online mobile recycling websites that will mail you an envelope to return a mobile in, but Boots allows you to simply walk into one of their hundreds of stores and grab your own envelope so that it gets off on its way much quicker.

The only downside is that there is not any hard cash offers for an old mobile, but anytime that you choose to sell Boots a mobile you receive points that will continue to build up on the company’s Advantage Card and after thirty days have passed you can trade them in for items such as cosmetics, toiletries, food, and many other products at any Boots stores.

Outside of mobile phones, Boots will also take trade-ins for digital cameras, printer cartridges, MP3 players, and several other electrical items all of which count of advantage points. Within a six month period households are allowed to trade in up to six devices so you can wait and add up points for even better treats at the store.