Did you know that there is a program called Cell Phones for Soldiers which accomplishes two purposes: it recycles your old cell phones and helps troops call home. From the Cell Phones for Soldiers Web site:

"The Cell Phones for Soldiers program was started in April 2004 by 13-year-old Brittany Bergquist and her 12-year-old brother Robbie of Norwell, Massachusetts. Robbie and Brittany's goal is to help our soldiers serving overseas call home. They hope to provide as many soldiers as possible with prepaid calling cards. Through generous donations and the recycling of used cell phones, Robbie and Brittany have already distributed thousands of calling cards to soldiers around the globe."

The phones are sent to ReCellular, which pays Cell Phones for Soldiers for each donated phone – enough to provide an hour of talk time to soldiers abroad. “Americans will replace an estimated 130 million cell phones this year,” says Mike Newman, vice president of ReCellular, “with the majority of phones either discarded or stuffed in a drawer. Most people don’t realize that the small sacrifice of donating their unwanted phones can have a tremendous benefit for a worthy cause like Cell Phones for Soldiers.”


AT&T is one of the sponsors of this effort, having donated more than $500,000 in prepaid phone cards to the project. Through July, 2008, you can drop off your used phone at all 1,800 company-owned AT&T wireless store locations. Or, you may notice plastic bags around campus that are pre-addressed and also prepaid making the donation just about effortless. It seems like ReCellular must be benefiting from this effort but if the alternative use for your old cell phone is to lie in a dark drawer, why not? Also, if you are concerned about erasing your personal information from the phone, and you should be, there are instructions for how to do that for all model phones on the Web site.