Brooklyn's Progress
March 2003

By Michelle Fufaro

Everyone has a cell phone these days.  People from ages 8-80 have one in hand and are actively using them.  It’s difficult to walk down the street without hearing an electronic jingle of Beethoven’s 9th or a Bossonova beat in someone’s hand.  New styles and features of phones are constantly being generated.  Why not donate the old one so that someone else can use it? Even though it seems that recycling in New York City is a thing of the past, there is always something that we can do as individuals to make a difference.

Within the past year, Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment (http://www.bcue.org/) has participated in a nation-wide recycling program, created by the Funding Factory (http://www.fundingfactory.com/), for collecting and recycling used laser and inkjet cartridges and cell phones.  The program is available to non-profit organizations, businesses and schools.   The Funding Factory has reached thousands of non-profit groups since it began in 1997 and the numbers of new organizations signing up is steadily increasing.  BCUE’s participation in this program has been very successful.  And it’s just getting started.

Green Up (GU) is a committee that consists of a few BCUE staff members who volunteer their time to create a better workplace. The goal of the committee is to help keep BCUE environmentally aware.  GU decided to take on the Funding Factory program partly as an opportunity to inform the community that recycling is still possible in New York City.

The idea is simple: bring your old phone to a participating store and you can use this donation as a tax deduction.  “Returned cell phones are completely refurbished”, says Allison Felix, a representative from Funding Factory.  “The phones then are sold at discount prices as secondary merchandise to third world countries or organizations dedicated to the prevention of domestic and elderly abuse.”

GU members devised a plan to rev up the campaign cell phones starting with a nearby community: Park Slope.  BCUE is located in Prospect Park, very close to thriving 7th Avenue.   Along 7th Avenue from Flatbush Avenue to Windsor Terrace, cell phone stores are abundant. GU members decided to target these stores and urge them to collect the old phones.  BCUE then boxes the phones and sends them to the Funding Factory.  In return, BCUE receives credit “points” that go towards the purchase of computers or other technology.

Going into stores and recruiting cell phone donors was pitched by Alix Bowman, co-chair of the GU committee.  Her roommate is a cell phone salesman and is aware of high flow of phones that are returned.  From a salesman’s point of view, phones come in by the dozen almost daily.  From a recycler’s point of view, there’s business to be had, and work to be done.

Michelle Fufaro is Assistant Coordinator of Environmental Science Programs at the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment.

If you are interested in donating a used cell phone, please email Michelle Fufaro at fufaro@BCUE.org or Alix Bowman bowman@BCUE.org
You can also contact the center at:
Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment
Tennis House, Prospect Park
Brooklyn, NY 11215
(718)788-8500