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Cell Phone and Laptop Recycling Drive Pacific Skyline Council Announces Cell Phone & Laptop Recycling DrivePacific Skyline Council, Boy Scouts of America is proud to announce a new, environmentally responsible community service initiative designed to benefit our Council while simultaneously helping to alleviate the fast growing environmental problem of e-waste. We need your help… Simply dust off your old cell phone (no accessories), ink jet cartridge, ipod, digital camera or laptop computer (no desktops, tower computers and/or monitors) and drop it off in the box at either of the Council Offices. 100% of the proceeds from the recycling of these items will benefit the Pacific Skyline Council, Boy Scouts of America. For more information please contact: Jill Schwab 650-341-5633, extension 103 Jill.Schwab@scouting.org NOTE: All donated laptops will have their hard drives removed and destroyed. About Cellular Phone WasteOver 100 million cellular phones are stockpiled in U.S. households creating potentially hazardous waste. By 2008, an estimated 130 million cellular phones will be discarded annually in the U.S. alone. On average Americans replace their cell phones every 12 to 18 months. Unfortunately, cell phones contain eight toxic substances including: Arsenic, Antimony, Beryllium, Cadmium, Copper, Lead, Nickel and Zinc. Although benign when properly refurbished or recycled, these toxic substances pose a serious environmental and health risk if discarded improperly. Cell phone toxins leach into soil and groundwater from landfills and form highly toxic dioxins & furans during incineration. In fact, the cadmium from a single phone is capable of polluting 158,200 gallons of water. That's 1.2 Million 16-ounce coffees! About Laptop Computer WasteIt takes about six hundred pounds of fossil fuels and chemicals to create the chips for one personal computer. Seventy pounds of water are used to rinse out impurities in a single chip. The amount of waste generated to produce one laptop is close to 4,000 times its weight. When you throw away a 5-pound laptop you are throwing away roughly 20,000 pounds of waste.
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