Recycle Your Cell Phones to Go Green

Instead of trashing your treasured cell phone, recycle it.

The landfills are filling. It was bound to happen eventually. In a disposable society, it's become second nature to just throw things out.

What gets thrown out more and more often are electronic machines like computers, personal digital assistants, and increasingly, cell phones. With billions of cell phones accumulating in trash bins, discarded like so much flotsam, an apocalyptic environmental disaster is just waiting to happen. But it doesn't have to be that way. Cell phones can be recycled.

Even the Environmental Protection Agency has leaped onto the recycling bandwagon in 2008. Last year's EPA initiative, "Recycle Your Cell Phone, It's an Easy Call" was joined by Big Corporate in the form of AT &T, Best Buy, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, Office Depot, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Sprint, Staples, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless.

Public service announcements heralded the campaign in print, touting environmental, social, and convenient benefits entailed with recycling cell phones. Downloadable podcasts discussed how and why in technical terms. Special cell phone collection events were hosted. Did I mention that cell phone recycling is usually free? Some programs even bought cell phones back from consumers so that they could be recycled. Dropping them off or mailing them in was made easy.

But now it's 2009. The Bush Era is over; enter Obama. Is the Easy Call campaign still in the forefront of your mind? If it isn't, it should be. Cell phones are still filling landfills at an alarming rate. Cell phones are made from precious metals, copper, and plastics – all of which require energy to mine or manufacture. They're not just a gift from Oz, simply appearing in reality and disappearing when you throw them out.

Even if a government campaign isn't in full swing in your area, there are plenty of avenues for recycling your cell phones. Donate them to a charity of your choice while helping the charity earn recycling dollars. Manufacturers and independent retail shops will accept them for refurbishing, if not always for recycling. If you wish to recycle, an independent repair shop will usually know the best way to do it. You can go green. You just have to want to do so.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

The Greatest Race: BlackBerry vs. iPhone

Now that BlackBerry has finally overtaken the iPhone in total sales, the race is on.

It doesn't cost as much. It's available in so many places that it's said to be ubiquitous. But like runners-up everywhere, according to First Quarter 2009 sales statistics, the iPhone is now in second place. How do you like those apples, Apple? Research in Motion's BlackBerry Curve is officially the most popular U.S. smartphone.

The smartphone list of bestsellers was primarily BlackBerry territory, as several types of BlackBerry sets made the list. Hip Hooray for RIM, of course, but since the iPhone is only available from a single source (AT &T), is it surprising that Apple's pride and joy has suddenly morphed into an also-ran? Every major carrier makes BlackBerry's devices ubiquitous, but if that's the case, why is it still a race? Why has it taken this long for the Curve to emerge as numero uno?

The picture is in constant flux. June 2009 is virtually certain to introduce some brand-new Apple hardware, even as BlackBerry’s devices are being continually updated since the release of the iPhone 3G in 2008. The Curve's current lofty stature might soon be as relevant as the hula hoop's place as a child's toy.
Smack in the middle of the list is T-Mobile's G1, the only smartphone to employ Google technology, at least in the sense of an operating system. If Google were to be sparked in some unseen manner, sales of the G1 could leapfrog over all the berries, whether sweet or not.

More likely will be a resurgence of Apple's iPhone during the summer, despite but not because of their single-offering business model. A new less expensive iPhone introduced with a big league marketing push would mean not only a return to #1, but if the platform finally gets stretched beyond the captive AT&T, RIM might be pulling a Satchel Paige before long – Don't look back, something might be gaining on you! That something might be a more ubiquitous iPhone that might even threaten to lap the field. But these ranking games can prove fickle.

Many U.S. rural areas are without AT&T service because networks are yet to be built. Many consumers really want iPhones, but feel obliged to settle for BlackBerries. When that happens, even the currently exalted Curve is less than sweet.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

The Sale: CPR Offers Refurbished and Unlocked Phones

CPR has in stock a surprising variety of so-called "recycled cell phones." Besides taking advantage of some excellent deals, it's the environmentally-conscious way to go.

CPR announces "The Sale." Cell phones that some might refer to as "used," or "pre-owned," others might call "refurbished." CPR's trained technicians are experts at performing the precise unlocking modifications necessary to make a cell phone work for you in the same way that it once worked for its previous owner, with every one of its touted features intact. Refurbishing a cell phone is not a whole lot different from refurbishing anything else of value, and it can often be considered a little more time consuming or involved as an extensive repair. A phone might have been on its last leg. Instead of being on the way to the nearest landfill, it lives again to become your communicator. What could be sweeter than that?

But it gets better. CPR offers a 90-day warranty on any unlocked or refurbished cell phone. If it were to fail within that 90-day interim, you are not out of luck as you would likely be when dealing with a manufacturer. We'd fix it, as if it were a brand new unit.

In a word, another sweetening agent for CPR customers interested in purchasing refurbished or unlocked phones is price. We do have set prices for previously owned models, but we like to think that any reasonable offer will be considered. Imagine all the features you'd come to expect and that would be available for you during the unit's "second run," what could be more thrifty than that?

It gets still better. We live in an age when our landfills are filling up, often with gadgets like cell phones. An environmental catastrophe beckons like the Grim Reaper high on the polluting fumes contributing to Global Warming. If you decide not to buy yet another new cell phone, and instead content yourself with a refurbished or unlocked model fresh from the trained technicians at CPR, you're helping the environment. Once again, what could be sweeter than that?

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

CPR Offers Repair Service While You Wait

At its many convenient locations, CPR will often repair your cell phone or electronic device while you wait.

CPR's trained technicians hail from the four corners of the world. As children, they dreamt of nothing else except repairing cell phones and a myriad of electronic devices. Bobby's tale is typical. When Bobby BestRepairGuyEver was six years old, he found his first cell phone on the street outside his beige row house in an unspecified part of town. "It was blue," he says when asked or poked, "and I fell in love with it. But it didn't work at first." Little Bobby learned to use a screwdriver in ways unimagined by other little boys inhabiting his desolate environs. Other little boys brought home kittens or puppies and learned to pet them after much practice. Bobby BestRepairGuyEver, however, disdained animals that failed to beep or emit electronic sounds. "My blue cell phone was just like my pet," he says, "until there came a day when just staring at it for five or six hours wasn't enough." Acting on some impulse as yet unexplained, Bobby began poking and prodding with his screwdriver, also a beloved pet in his infantile mind. "I opened my blue cell up," he remembers, "like I was dissecting something alive. I heard it hum, and then beep." Soon his cell phone was working just fine. "I called Canada one day, and then a friend of mine in Chicago. Even the primitive LCD screen was working again."

Bobby fits in perfectly at CPR. "Like most of our trained technicians, he can fix anything," asserts an admiring colleague. "I've seen Bobby undo liquid damage, fix an iPhone that was stepped on by a radio celebrity, repair cracks in LCDs, even big ones, and repair broken phones that were shattered, dropped, or cruelly silenced like his beloved blue phone from boyhood once was. He can mend phones broken in halves or even thirds, and do this with a smile."

Another colleague is more direct. "Bobby, and most of our trained technicians at CPR, usually feel compelled to fix anything broken that comes into contact with their nimble fingers. Most amazing, they're so fast. Bobby prides himself on repairing cell phones and electronic devices while customers wait, and sometimes they don't even have to wait long."

Says Bobby, "Where's my blue cell phone? Did somebody hide it again? C'mon you guys. Where is it?"

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.