OTTAWA – The country’s free cellphone recycling program Recycle My Cell is calling on Canadians to join in the Earth Day celebrations this Sunday by responsibly recycling the unused cell phones and accessories hiding in their junk drawers.
Recycle My Cell offers nearly 2,800 drop-off locations across the country. Canadians may visit the bilingual website to get answers on how to erase their personal information from their old cellphones, as well as information about how to then recycle those devices.
The 2017 Understanding Cellphone Recycling Behaviours survey found that 62% of Canadians say they have cellphones in their possession that they are not using and are being stored, compared to 37% who say they don't. This is consistent with the 2016 wave which received the same percentages. Canadians report storing an average of 2.4 phones.
"Cellphone recycling isn't hard," said Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association president and CEO Robert Ghiz, in the news release. "When you get a new cellphone, follow a few easy steps and you can recycle your old phone instead of keeping it in a drawer at home or the office. It's really as simple as finding the drop-off location closest to you, and heading over to turn in the old device.”
Other key findings from the survey include:
– An overwhelming majority of Canadians (87%) support cellphone recycling programs. Over 80% of Canadians are aware cellphones can be recycled and 84% of Canadians would consider recycling their cellphones if they knew where to recycle them;
– Nearly nine in ten (89%) of Canadians personally have one cellphone that they actively use, 9% actively use two cellphones, while 1% use three cellphones and 2% use four cellphones or more;
– Consistent with 2016, 46% of Canadians have personally owned four cellphones or more prior to their actual phone (46% in 2016; 43% in 2015). Two in five have respectively owned two (19%) or three (18%) phones prior to their current one, while 16% have owned one;
– 483,338 wireless devices were recovered in 2017, and 7,506,802 wireless devices have been recovered since 2005.
"The desire to protect the planet for future generations is deeply embedded in Canadians, and we're proud to be working with Recycle My Cell to help people accomplish that goal," added Ghiz.
