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In one weekend Apple sold 1 million iPhone 3G’s.  The first iPhone, introduced only 1 year ago sold approximately 5 million.  Sources say they could sell upwards of 10 million of the newest 3G phones, since they opened up their overseas market.

So my question to you is…where are all the broken, discarded or replaced cell phones going?  Apple doesn’t offer a take back program or at least I can’t find mention of one.  Are the people that spent $500 a year ago to buy the original, just tossing that one in the trash or are they being responsible and taking the old one to a recycler?

All electronics have trace amounts of toxic chemicals like lead or phthalates, a chemical known to have hormone disrupting qualities, even the energy efficient CFL lightbulb contains trace amounts of mercury. The problem is not the chemicals…the issue is that most consumers don’t know that they are there and what to do with the electronics once they have lived their usefull life.

Now let me say this, I think that the buying of cell phones is out of hand.  In my opinion there is no reason to spend $500 on a cell phone and less then a year later need to buy another one.  Now I know there are more bells and whistles on the newer phone, but why can’t the old phone just be upgraded?  This is not the consumer’s fault, it’s the developer’s fault.  We as consumers are pulled in by the new shiny things.  The fact that you can pin point your location on your phone is a pretty nifty or serf the web with lightening fast speed while you are sitting on the train waiting for your stop.  I am not suggesting that electronics are not useful and needed, I am suggesting that we need to make sure consumers are better informed of what’s inside those electronics and what happens to them when you just throw them away.

I talk about being better informed consumers a lot in this blog, but if we are not informed producers will walk all over us and we will buy just for the sake of buying.

If we were to just throw away all of our electronics, we would slowly poison the surrounding ground and water.  We would eventually have so much heavy metals in the soil that we would be unable to plant and grow crops.  Our children would not be able to play outside because of the risk of lead poisoning.  Our children are already getting fat, if they were unable to go outside and get some exercise think of what would happen.

It’s not going to happen overnight, plastics take years to decompose but the pressure of the landfill will eventually put breaks in the plastic or glass and once the rain gets in the metals will leach out.  We need to stop the throwing away of electronics not for our children but their children and generations to come.

Write to your electronics producer, encourage them to start a take back program or better yet an upgrade program that takes those old electronics and makes them new again!

While you are waiting for that to happen, don’t forget to recycle.  Most municipalities have a electronic recycling program, if not go to E-Cycling Central search for your state and get the name of a local recycler. Just don’t throw things away, you never know what they might do to the earth.

Energy efficient tip #3 may cause quite a bit of controversy, but I’m gonna talk about it anyway.

Gradually replace all your lightbulbs with Compact Fluorescent Bulbs.

So many people talk about the pros and cons of CFL’s, I just had to talk about it.  I want you to notice that I said gradually and not run out and replace all your bulbs right now.  That would be a total waste of money so as your bulbs go out replace them with CFLs, but only if you are willing to follow all the rules.

CFLs save about $30 over the lifetime of the bulb, and most bulbs last 10 to 15 years if used correctly.  So that’s not a huge savings if you break it down, but if you have 20 bulbs in your house and lets just say they last for 10 years, you would be saving up to $60 each month on your electricity bill. 

But there are 4 problems with CFLs.

1.  The bulbs are not cheep like regular bulbs.  The bulbs that I have seen around here are $3 to $4 a piece.  So it might take 2 months before you really start to recoup the cost. 

2.  Most come wrapped in plastic and of course the bottom of the light is normally plastic.  So if you are hard core plastic free, CFLs might not be the right choice.  There are other choices in other cities, in some cities there are groups that have the lights wrapped in cardboard and if you buy from them they give part of their profit to charity.  So do what you can to look for organizations like those and support them.

3. CFLs lifespans are shortened if you leave them on for less than 15 minutes.  So putting them in the bathroom, where the lights go on and off quickly would not be the best situation.  It’s best to put them in rooms where lights stay on for longer periods of time, like your family room. 

4. CLFs have a small bit of mercury in them so they must be recycled or put with your other hazardous materials.   Many cities accept these bulbs durring their hazardous materials collection days, unfortunitly my city doesn’t take them since there is no one local that will recycle them.  But I guess it will take several years for the lights to go out and hopefully by then recycling of CFLs will become more prevalent.

There are several pros and cons to using CFLs and I can’t go into all of them.  So do a Google search on Compact Fluorescent Lights and see for yourself.  You make the decision on whether or not CFLs make since in your own home.