City Has Cellphone Recycling Day

Hundreds of people turned out to support Knoxville, Tennessee's first annual cell phone recycling day turning in over 500 phones that otherwise would have amounted to 576 pounds of landfill waste. The City of Knoxville in partnership with Knox County, The Knoxville Recycling Coalition, BellSouth, WBIR-TV Channel 10 and Cingular Wireless hosted this special event to raise consumer awareness about the benefits of cell phone recycling, while giving everyone the opportunity to responsibly dispose of their old phones.

"We put a call out to the businesses and residents of Knoxville and they responded with great enthusiasm. We are very proud of everyone who participated and the wonderful results we were able to achieve. Knoxville will be a cleaner, more beautiful city for it," said Mayor Victor Ashe.

In addition to helping keep their city clean, residents that turned in their old wireless phones for recycling received a free Nokia 3595 wireless phone after rebate with new service activation from Cingular Wireless. They were also entered into a drawing for US$150 for individual donors or US$250 for the non-profit organization that donated the largest number of phones.

The winners were Joshua Buckley-Durst, US$150, and Keep Knoxville Beautiful, US$250, for their donation of 37 phones.

"People upgrade their phones several times a year to keep up with technology, said Tom Salter, Executive Director of Keep Knoxville Beautiful. "We were amazed at how many phones our friends and co-workers had lying around, and we are glad we had the opportunity to help spread this important message and put old phones to good use."

In addition to achieving the goal of educating Knoxville residents about the benefits of cell phone recycling and Cingular's ongoing recycling program, the event also helped raise US$2,290 in one week for Special Olympics. "To encourage recycling throughout the year Cingular will continue to donate $5 to Special Olympics for any phone turned in at a Cingular retail or kiosk location," said Dru Dempsey, General Manager for Cingular Wireless - Knoxville, Tennessee.

The city and county of Knoxville will also accept any phone any time for recycling through Knoxville Recycle Coalition."

Posted to the site on 27th June 2003