Cell phones, coltan and gorillas

I’m not a big cell phone user, but I’ve worked my way through several over the last few years. I can’t be bothered about having the latest, smallest and smartest model on the market, but most of them don’t seem to last more than a year or two. Clearly a case of built-in obsolescence.

Just chucking away my old cell phones has always been an issue for me (which is probably why most of them end up in the bottom of some drawer), especially after reading a bit about coltan, a mineral that is an important component in cell phones. Eighty per cent of the world’s coltan (short for columbite-tantalite) comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it has financed various groups fighting in regional civil wars and led to increasing deforestation in the Kahuzi Biega National Park, resulting in the decimation of the local gorilla population. “Within the Dem. Rep. of Congo as a whole, the U.N. Environment Program has reported that the number of eastern lowland gorillas in eight Dem. Rep. of Congo national parks has declined by 90% over the past 5 years, and only 3,000 now remain.”

Here’s an interesting video clip from the US, where cell phone recycling seems to be an option at least in some places:

Anyone have any good ideas about where to take old cell phones in South Africa?

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