Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 8:07AM | 3 Comments tagged The Cottage | in Consumer Power, Sustainability, Technology
The Cottage | in Consumer Power, Sustainability, Technology Three Brilliant Uses for Your Old iPhone
The new iPhone 4S is coming and with it comes another generation of phones that will be relegated to sitting in a drawer or cabinet somewhere. How many? Well in the first weekend of actual sales, Apple sold one million iPhone 4S smartphones. That is a lot of smartphones. And it creates a lot of dumb phones that serve out their lives as expensive paperweights. So we've put together a list of three ways to put that old smart phone to clever use.
1. Save a life
Save the life of a child by turning your old smart phone into food. Phone2food.org has put together a program with BuyMyTronics that means that the value of every phone that they collect goes to UNICEF to provide food to famine stricken South Africa. The idea is a star initiative of the 50/50 Project. A creative community working to raise $1.8 million for UNICEF in 50 days with 50 projects. The folks tell me they only need to receive 7,500 unused iPhones to raise the entire goal. That feels very doable to me. And that money is estimated by UNICEF to buy and deliver food to Somalia where it is estimated that a child is now dying every six minutes. Go to Phone2food.org right now and get them any used smart phone you have. It doesn't have to be an iPhone. Or reach out at hello@phone2food.org They will send you an special envelope to make it just that much easier to send in your phone. This idea not only makes that dumb unused phone smart again, it makes it absolutely brilliant.
2. Make some money
Send your old unused phone to BuyMyTronics.com. You just go to their site and type in the brand and model number of the phone (or other electronic device because they buy back all sorts of stuff) and you'll see what it is worth. If you decide to sell it, they'll send you a shipping label, you'll ship it off, and when they receive it, they'll send you a check. Easy. They're obviously a wonderful company too since they're a smart way to upcycle electronics and they're involved with this Phone2food.org/UNICEF program--so they deserve your patronage. But if you can afford to donate the money this time around, we suggest phone2food.org.
3. See #1
We couldn't come up with anything else, but three is such a nice number and it had a really good ring for the title of the article.
We have a box of pre-paid postage envelopes on the FearLess Cottage porch right now.
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 8:07AM | 3 Comments
Reader Comments (3)
Haha, thanks, very smart and funny read. I was just wondering what to do with my old iPhone now that the 4S is on it's way :o)
Thanks for the post Alex. If anyone has any questions or wants to help in any way reach out to us at hello@phone2food.org We have lots of envelopes you could pass out to friends / coworkers / etc to make it just that much easier to send in your phone.
Give it to someone who would like to have it. Not everyone in the world can afford such luxuries every two years... not to mention just having a cell phone. If nothing else it makes a great iPod.