WASHINGTON-The Wireless Foundation, the charitable arm of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, has expanded its successful Donate-A-Phone program so that carriers and other wireless retailers may donate $2 to the charity of their choice for every phone they recycle.
“It is a way to pull in store traffic. Anyone who has an old phone either is or was a wireless user so this is good traffic,” said David Diggs, executive director of the foundation, noting that carriers now get a “lift” when upgrading customer phones.
The Return Outreach Initiative, as the expanded program is known, was announced at the foundation dinner earlier this month, but collection efforts will not begin until July when Rural Cellular Corp. and Cellular South Inc. will begin collecting phones under the program.
The foundation has partnered with ReCellular Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich. ReCellular has been in the business of recycling cellular phones since 1989.
The process is expected to work as follows:
1. Carriers or retailers interested in the program would first designate the charitable program that will receive the monies collected from the recycling of the phones;
2. After collecting the phones, the foundation will donate $2 per phone collected to the designated charity;
3. ReCellular will then pay the remaining fee for the phones and recycle the phones as it has in the past.
The process may be a bit different in situations where a carrier is conducting a technology trade-out campaign, Diggs said, noting those details are still being worked out. Details are also being worked out on how carriers with customer loyalty programs could be Return Outreach Initiative participants.
In addition to the public-relations benefits carriers and retailers get for conducting phone collection campaigns, there is also an environmental benefit, said Diggs. The Donate-A-Phone program has kept 67 tons of phones and batteries out of landfills, he said.
“On top of all of the other benefits, it turns out it is environmentally useful,” said Diggs.
