Wireless Trade-In Program Keeps 1 Million Outdated Phones Out of Landfills

This post is from Verizon's Sustainability Blog and was written by James Gowen

I want to your draw attention to a milestone for one of Verizon’s recycling programs: the Verizon Wireless Trade-In Program has collected  1 million phones in stores in less than a year since it began. The program lets people trade in used mobile devices for gift cards and dispose of outdated phones in an environmentally sound way. So far, it has kept the equivalent of 140 tons of e-waste out of landfills and 436 tons of carbon dioxide out of the environment.

In honor of the occasion, Verizon will sponsor the planting of 1,000 trees in Northern California’s Klamath National Forest through a donation to American Forests. The plantings will cover a handful of areas that were scorched by wildfires, benefitting local watersheds, scenery, recreation and wildlife.

This is one of many recycling activities we pursue at Verizon. We conduct Recycling Rallies open to the public, deploy our employee Green Team to help volunteer in the community, and encourage employees to reduce energy use and recycle, like these employees at our Lincoln, Nebraska call center.  All of this rolls into our big sustainability goal: to cut our carbon intensity in half by 2020.

People interested in making sure their no-longer used wireless phones are recycled properly have two options from Verizon: in addition to the Trade-In Program, Verizon’s HopeLine program turns no-longer-used wireless phones into support for victims of domestic violence.