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In
the new millennium, there's an easier way to fill charitable
coffers: collecting old cell phones and reselling them to
companies that refurbish and ship them overseas.
Coping with donations at Cell Phones for Soldiers
One charity, Cell Phones for Soldiers, was set up in April
2004 by 13-year-old Brittany Bergquist and her 12-year-old
brother, Robert. The Massachusetts siblings had read about
a soldier who had run up a $7,000 phone bill, and decided
to try to help pay the phone bills of soldiers deployed
in Iraq and other foreign lands.
According to father Bob Bergquist, the kids have already
amassed a network of 1,500 drop-off donation centers for
cell phones in fire houses, schools, and other locations
all around the country, and raised more than $15,000 recycling
old cells.
The
volume of phones has grown so fast, says Bergquist, it's
"a little scary."
Now,
the American Legion is lining up donation centers in all
50 states, perhaps 15,000 locations in all, to accept cell-phone
donations for the Cell Phones for Soldiers
The
amazing, colossal discarded cell-phones
According to the trade association for the wireless industry,
CTIA, about 165 million Americans subscribe to cell phone
services.
By
2005, according to the environmental research organization
Inform, 130 million cell phones a year will be retired in
the United States. There will soon be a backlog of 500 million
un-discarded phones.
Kim
Kuo, spokeswoman for CTIA, says the average American changes
handsets once every 18 months. Nearly every time a wireless
company makes a new deal with a customer, a free phone comes
along with the offer.
"Most
people don't want to throw away the old phones," Kuo
says, "and 70 percent of them just tuck them away in
a drawer."
For charities and for individuals, it's a snap to sell the
old phones over the Internet.
James
Mosieur, CEO of RMS Communications Group, which runs CellForCash,
says his company lists 278 different cell-phone models it
is willing to buy, most of which are less than three years
old.
To
turn a phone into cash, go to the Web site, click on a cell
manufacturer and model and a price appears instantly. Complete
the process by filling out a name and address form and the
company sends a box with a prepaid shipping label. Pack
up the phone and drop it in the mail.
After
the company receives a phone, it tests it to make sure it
works, then cuts a check.
David
Bresnahan, a volunteer for the Boy Scouts of America in
West Jordan, Utah, says his local boy scout troop expects
to raise more than $6,000 by collecting and reselling used
phones this summer.
The
cell-phone drive began more as a teaching exercise, he explains,
an environmental lesson in how old electronics are disposed
of in landfills.
"A
local TV station picked up the story, and we started getting
hundreds of calls from people wanting to donate their phones,"
says Bresnahan. "We had no idea the volume of what
could be found."
The
Scouts take any phones people give them and ship it all
to CellForCash.com. With their profits, 14 Scouts have planned
a one-week, whitewater trek in Alaska.
Making
it simple
Mosieur says CellForCash buys 10,000 to 15,000 phones a
month and pays an average of about $15 apiece for them.
A
quick perusal of the site shows it will pay from $4, for
a Nokia 1250, to $173 for a Samsung SGH-P705, a recent model
and comes with a camera and TV tuner.
Mosieur
says that only 10 percent of his handsets come from fundraisers,
but he expects "a lot more business from them in the
future."
That's because many cell phone providers and other organizations
have begun to encourage donations. Sprint and Verizon, for
example, have set up donation programs in their retail stores,
according to Kuo.
Robert
Newton, of Oldcell phone.com says half of the 20,000 phones
that his company buys each month come from charities. "We
have non-profit organizations all over the country that
send us phones," he says.
The
company is donating a portion of all cell phones received
in June to Cell Phones for Soldiers.
Some
charities actually use some of the collected phones themselves.
Call To Protect, a program administered by the Wireless
Foundation, CTIA's charitable arm, places refurbished cells
with victims of domestic violence so they can call for help
in emergencies.
But
what happens to all the other old phones? Both CellForCash
and Oldcell phone ship most of them to Latin America. "There's
tremendous demand there for old American cells," says
Mosieur.
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