You can now help save Gorilla’s and Chimpanzees in Africa simply by donating your mobile phone! Each time your mobile phone rings, a tiny piece of metallic ore from Africa is making this call possible: coltan. The mining of this commodity within the Congo River Basin is contributing to forest loss and unrest in the region, and is accelerating the loss of Eastern gorillas at an alarmingly fast rate.
By donating your phone through our mobile phone recycling program you are:
Diverting your phone from landfill
Helping raise money to support the Jane Goodall Institute's primate conservation work in Africa through the sale of refurbished phones and…
Lessening the demand for coltan mining by providing the coltan chip in your old mobile phone a second life.
To support the mobile phone recycling program you can:
Increase awareness and collect more phones by displaying our printable poster!
Next time your mobile phone rings, let that be a reminder that 'they're calling on you'!
How does recycling my old mobile phone raise money for JGI's conservation Programs?
All phones collected by companies/schools/individuals are sent to the Aussie Recycling Project (ARP) for Recycling. All phones that are collected and classified for re-use are refurbished and exported to our partners that have verified take-back programs and are members of their state recycling programs. The phones that cannot be reused, have their components extracted to be used as spare parts. Older phones and phones that are seriously damaged are sent to material recycling, where materials can be recovered and put back into productive use. ARP give $3 from every GSM phone received by bulk courier or reply paid parcel, regardless of whether it is refurbished or recycled, to JGI Australia. These funds are then used to support our work in Africa for the conservation of great apes (Ranger programs that patrol parks to stop hunting - often linked to the close proximity of coltan mines), conservation of their habitats (creating forest corridors) and supporting the communities that live in close proximity to them (environmental education, discouraging hunting practices, providing alternatives).
Besides these conservation programs, by recycling or reusing the phones we are reducing the overall demand for coltan and therefore the lucrative business of illegal coltan mining will not be so lucrative - this is how we hope to directly effect coltan mining in Africa.
Did you know?
More than 800 million people around the world currently use mobile phones and that figure is growing daily! In Australia alone, it is estimated that there were 9 million new mobile phones sold in the last 12 months.
Australians typically upgrade their phones every 18-24 months! This exerts enormous pressure on the mining of resources such as coltan needed to manufacture new phones.
80% of the world’s coltan reserves are located within the Democratic Republic of Congo. As the forest is denuded for mining, the protection once offered by the habitat in it’s pristine state is now no longer able to shelter gorillas and a range of other species from the bush meat crisis. In Kahuzi Biega National Park, more than fifty percent of the Eastern gorilla population has been lost, leaving the species on the brink of extinction.
You can make a difference simply by donating your old mobile phone.