National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Photo: Can Cell-Phone Recycling Help African Gorillas?


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The average lifespan of a cell phone is 14 months. There may already be 500 million unused cell phones in the United States, with as many as 100 million added each year. Recycling cell phones protects landfills from the many potentially hazardous chemicals found in the phones, including antimony, arsenic, copper, cadmium, lead, and zinc.

Photograph by William Albert Allard