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Verizon Wireless Voices Opposition to Mandatory Cell Phone Recycling

6:00 am on July 14, 2006 | Category: Cell Phones, Editorials, Law, Mobile Devices, Regulation

Westchester County, located in New York state, has recently passed an ordinance making it mandatory for residents to recycle their old cell phones.

Although itâ€™s difficult to see how such a law would be enforced, county regulators have promised to impose fines of up to $250 on households that throw obsolete handsets in the trash. Other counties and municipalities throughout North America are now considering similar restrictions on mobile phone disposal, citing concerns about the toxicity of heavy metals like lead, cadmium, and mercury.

â€œThe average consumer should care about recycling his or her cell phone because they contain hazardous materials that are toxic to public health and the environment,â€ explained Paige Franklin of Californians Against Waste, the group that successfully campaigned for some tough new restrictions in California.

Despite all the cries for government regulation, however, the wireless industry itself says that it is handling the issue by itself just fine.

â€œWeâ€™ve had a program in place for several years now,â€ said Joe Farren from CTIAâ€”The Wireless Association. â€œYou take your old handset in to a store and theyâ€™ll recycle it for you We donâ€™t think it gets any easier than that.â€

Farren went on to note that the program isnâ€™t carrier specific, meaning that a Cingular or Sprint Nextel wireless store will happily accept a Verizon or T-Mobile handset.

Once returned, some of the old phones are recycled, while other are refurbished and resold by other companies. Verizon Wireless, for example, reportedly resold 600,000 or the 850,000 phones that it collected in 2005, donating the proceeds from these sales to charity.

The company asserts that this industry-wide program is working very well, and that government regulation would only complicate the whole process.

â€œWeâ€™re a national provider, and if each community has a different rule it becomes very confusing,â€ said Verizon spokeswoman, Debra Lewis.

Overall, the wireless industryâ€™s consensus seems clear; a voluntary recycling program works much better than a complex and difficult-to-manage series of government restrictions.

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