Recycling isn’t just a fad. It’s a way of life. At Centro Wireless, we embody the spirit of environmentalism. Our business is one lean green recycling machine. We are passionate about the function our business performs in keeping cell phones and batteries out of landfills. And there are a lot of them to save. Every year close to 150 million cell phones are discarded by users in the United States alone. Of this amount, approximately 10 percent are recycled, meaning the other 90 percent of phones, or 135 million, wind up in our landfills.

Many of us desire to have the latest feature-rich mobile device, a fact that has led to the average American trading in their current mobile device for a new model every two years. At this rate, it is no wonder why so many used cell phones wind up in the landfill. Cell phones contain precious metals including gold, silver, palladium, copper, silver and a variety of rare earth minerals. The impact of this is two-fold. First, many of these metals are toxic and harm the soil, air and water when they are sent to the landfill or incinerated. Second, instead of salvaging these materials, they are wasted and new metals must be extracted. Various estimates place the value of previous metals in discarded phones in the tens of millions of dollars.

Each one million cell phones that is recycled yields approximately 35,000 pounds of copper, 750 pounds of silver, 70 pounds of gold and 30 pounds of palladium.  Centro Wireless takes recycling seriously because we recognize that we live on a planet with finite resources, a growing population and a changing climate. Centro Wireless’ policy is that absolutely no phones that we receive will wind up in the trash. All of the phones we receive are either remarketed, reused, scrapped for parts or sent for recycling and resource extraction.

Our commitment to environmentalism extends beyond our phones and electronics recycling. We have adopted environmentally-conscious standards and practices throughout business. We’re happy to contribute our part to a better planet and look forward to opportunity to continuing on our mission to save phones and batteries from landfills.