The infographic embedded here comes by way of Geekaphone and it outlines some enviro-minded factoids on the iPhone for you to consider. For example, of the 45kg of CO2 pumped out as a result of the iPhone 4, 57% comes from production and 35% comes from consumer use. The sad thing is that consumers aren’t really doing their part with less than 10% of phones being recycled.

There are over two million cell phones entering landfills each week, since the average life span of a phone is less than 18 months. This results in 65,000 tons of toxic waste (equivalent to three small oil tankers) being dumped at the dump each year.

What about Apple? While the reduced packaging has done some good (14% fuel savings), it’s still scary to think that 30 companies on 3 continents are responsible for the iPhone, including 300,000 workers in China earning less than $10 a day. That opens another can of worms altogether, but it’s still worth knowing as you download another fart app and stream another video on Crackle.

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Let’s say you drive a car. Every few months you have to change the oil. You can do this yourself or you can take it in to a shop. In either case, you have to discard the old oil and that’s not good for the environment. Scientists at Cambridge, though, may have a better solution.

A good deal of used oil is just disposed of, but the University of Cambridge researchers have developed a more effective strategy for something called pyrolysis. Right now, that process is used to heat up the used oil to a high temperature in the absence of oxygen. This breaks it down.

However, the heating process isn’t terribly efficient at producing liquids and gases that can be converted into fuel. By adding a microwave-absorbent material before heating the oil with microwaves, though, they found that the used oil was heated more evenly and converted almost 90% of the old stuff into usable gasoline and diesel.

No, this still isn’t an ideal solution — the gas and diesel is still being burned away in a conventional vehicle of some kind, rather than in a “greener” vehicle — but it sure beats discarding the used oil altogether. It’s like reusing by recycling. Now we need to work on reducing too.

9Read (PDF Link)]

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When compact fluorescent bulbs first hit the scene, they were a revolution. A bulb that lasted many times as long as the incandescent counterpart and used only a fraction of the power. Well, GE put out an ecomagination challenge to see what they could do next and this idea is easily one of the best.

In the video below, you can see Robert Hand show a prototype of his idea that requires you to just replace the “bulb” part of a compact fluorescent rather than replacing the whole thing. The ballast part can be reused, Hand say it’s really the most expensive part of the package anyhow and easily outlasts the tubular twisty bit containing the chemical gas.

CFLs are supposed to save you money in the long run because they last so much longer and use less energy. They can get even cheaper if you can reuse the ballast part. Pretty interesting stuff, don’t you think?

[via ecomagination]

The post Compact Fluorescent Invention Recycles The Ballast appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Sony Ericsson is expanding their GreenHeart collection of environmentally-friendly phones with a Canadian release of the Cedar. With post-consumer recycled plastics, a low-consumption charger and waterborne paint, the phone is being sold exclusively by Fido in Canada and direct from SE in the UK, aimed at consumers and businesses looking at a low-impact mobile solution.

But it’s not just a novelty phone for hippies. The Cedar boasts EAS push email, fast browsing and Widget Manager 2.0 for quick access to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook via the stand-by screen. With Bluetooth and quick, easy browsing on 3G and HSDPA, you can stay connected – whatever that means to you. You can even use the Cedar as a modem for your laptop.

The only two complaints I would have seem to have simple enough solutions. At 0.6″ it’s a bit thick for the size, but the “human curvature” design now typical to Sony Ericsson handsets ensures it’ll sit comfortably in your hand regardless. It’s not a “smartphone,” but it is smarter, and greener than most.

[SE Cedar, UK Product Page

The post Fido Fetches Sony Ericsson Cedar GreenHeart Phone appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Sprint hopes to keep phones from ending up in landfills. Project Connect will take your unwanted mobile phones, batteries, chords, earphones, accessories, data cards and even instruction manuals. It doesn’t matter what make, model, carrier the phone is, or what condition it’s in. Proceeds from equipment collected will fund free Internet safety resources for kids.

To recycle your phone or whatever else you have lying around, you can pick up a postage-paid envelope at a Sprint store. It doesn’t have to be a Sprint phone for you to participate, and you don’t even have to step into a Sprint store if you don’t want to, you can print off a pre-paid shipping label on Sprint’s website.

Sprint will refurbish whatever parts they can so the equipment can be used again. Whatever is non-recoverable is recycled for base materials. Sprint also has a buy-back program which can be used toward the purchase of a new Sprint phone. According to their website, they’ve recycled over 16 million phones. PR stint or not, it’s a great way to get rid of the spare chords and old phones you’ve got shoved into a drawer somewhere.

[Griffith.edu, GreenTechnolog via Sprint]

Photo: Technology Review

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It started out as Resell, Re-use, Recycle, but it has since taken on a much simpler name: eBay Instant Sale. The idea is that you go to the eBay Instant website, plug in some basic information about the gadget you no longer need, and it’ll pump out a dollar value.

Should you choose to accept the value, you can print out the free shipping label and bid adieu to your Motorola RAZR and your Canon A60 digital camera. About a week or so later, the money shows up in your PayPal account for your spending pleasure (presumably back on eBay).

I’d imagine that the sale values for your old gadgets wouldn’t be all that much money, but it’s better than nothing. They’ll even take your $0 value items, providing you with the same free shipping label. Makes you wonder what they do with this gadgetry afterwards? Is eBay looking for a cheap way to build Skynet using last year’s technology?

SOURCE: eBay

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