Because hundreds of millions of new cell phones are sold every year just in the U.S., and only a small percentage of the old ones ever make it to a proper recycling facility, our modern mobile lifestyle is creating a huge e-waste problem.
According to a recent study from the CDC that tracked the demographics of landline phone usage (the study was designed to help the organization adapt its data collection programs), over half of the households in the U.S. either don’t use their landline for phone calls, or don’t have one to begin with.
This trend of going wireless for phone service is certainly handy for the users, but if those figures from the CDC are accurate, they could spell an increasing problem for e-waste disposal in this country (and the rest of the world), because the average replacement/upgrade interval is just 18 months, which adds up to a whole lot of cell phones that will end up in landfills or incinerators.
Source: Treehugger