I recently helped Melissa* go through her office space and discovered that she had four old cell phones she no longer used after upgrading a few times. She had forgotten she still had them and was very happy to hand them over when I offered to take them to a drop box at my local supermarket. This drop box is for an organization that refurnishes cell phones and makes them available for people who couldn’t otherwise afford them but who need a way to call 911 in an emergency, in particular senior citizens and people coming out of domestic violence situations.
Before I took the phones, we figured out how Melissa could wipe them clean of contact information plus call and texting history, which is important to do prior to donating! The organization collecting the phones advertised that it does wipe out histories, which is useful to know, but be aware that not all cell phone reuse organizations do that. Most cell phones are set up to make it easy for us to wipe them clean ourselves, though you may have to tinker around to find the correct method, or ask your children or teenage friends/neighbors to help, as they’re usually pretty good figuring it out. It can’t hurt to keep one previous phone as a back-up in case your current one gets stolen, lost, broken but there is no need to keep more than one back-up.
The best part of this donation is that: a. your old phones are out of your space, b. they’re put into good use by being made available for people to use to call 911, and c. they’re kept out of landfill. If the organization finds that a phone cannot be put to use, it will disassemble the cell phone and recycle as much of the material as possible. For the most part, it is tax deductible to donate old cell phones. Your service provider (such as: Verizon, T-Mobile or Sprint) may take in old phones to recycle or donate for you as well. They’ll even help you wipe out your contacts and history.
If you aren’t sure where to donate your phone, or just haven’t gotten around to doing so, I can take care of this for you.
*Name has been changed for privacy