OTTAWA – The country’s free cellphone recycling program Recycle My Cell is calling on Canadians to join in the Earth Day celebrations this Saturday by responsibly recycling the unused cell phones and accessories hiding in their junk drawers.
According to the 2016 Understanding Cell Phone Recycling Behaviours survey released Thursday, nearly two-thirds of Canadians (62%) say that they have cell phones in their possession they are not using, an uptick from the 48% of 2015 respondents who said that they stored their used cell phones. Canadians also report storing an average of 2.1 phones.
Recycle My Cell offers more than 2,500 drop-off locations across the country. Canadians may visit the bilingual website and enter their postal code to locate the drop-off locations closest to them where their old wireless devices will be accepted, regardless of brand or condition. The site also offers printable postage-paid labels that can be used to mail the devices back to Recycle My Cell at no cost to the consumer.
"I am thrilled to see Canadians' support for cell phone recycling programs remains very strong”, said Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association president and CEO Robert Ghiz, in the news release. "As more Canadians are using their mobile devices to do more, it's increasingly important that they give their old cell phones a proper send-off. I am proud of the work being done by Recycle My Cell to give Canadians the information they need to do just that."
Other key findings from the survey include:
– Support for cell phone recycling is extremely high, with 96% of Canadians either supporting or somewhat supporting the concept of recycling old, unused or unwanted phones;
– Nearly half of Canadians (46%) have owned four cellphones or more prior to their current one. Two in five have respectively owned two (20%) or three (20%) phones prior to their current one, while 13% have owned one;
– More than nine in ten Canadians (92%) actively use one cell phone, while 6% of Canadians actively use two cell phones, and 1% use three cell phones or four cell phones or more respectively; and
– 649,503 wireless devices were recovered in 2016, and 7.07 million wireless devices have been recovered since 2005.
