Mobile Phone Clamp Down - Recycling Becoming Mandatory

Westchester County in New York will soon be one of the first places in the U.S. to require consumers to recycle their old cell phones. The legislation will be backed up by fines of up to $250 for people caught trashing their old phones.

Jurisdictions across the country have been wrestling with the problem of outdated phones ending up in landfills and being burned in incinerators. The phones contain harmful chemicals and heavy metals like arsenic, zinc, copper and lead.

Many areas of the country have voluntary recycling programs. Most put the onus on cell phone retailers to recycle phones when new ones are purchased. But the New York county law is one of the first that makes it mandatory for consumers to recycle their old phones -- and backs it up with fines.

**Similar law in California

California has a similar law which prohibits residents from thowing away cell phones. The same law also bans disposal of common batteries.

Verizon Wireless has been instrumental in providing recycling channels for U.S. cell phone users. Through the program called Verizon Wireless HopeLine the company accepts used cell phones at its retail stores and then refurbishes and resells them.

The proceeds are used to provide cash grants, free air time, and cell phones to non-profit organizations and law enforcement agencies to aid victims of domestic violence.

Verizon is now also accepting spent batteries and rechargeable batteries. The still-functioning rechargeables are recharged and recycled.

Since the Verizon HopeLine program began in 2001 more than 2.5 million phones have been collected - 850,000 in 2005. In Southern California alone more than $ 260,000 in HopeLine grants were awarded to domestic violence agencies. In addition, more than 660 wireless phones with a year's prepaid airtime were donated to domestic violence agencies. They are used to aid survivors.

**China to Produce 340 Million Cell Phones in '06

The world's insatiable appetite for cheap goods is matched by China's impressive industrial machine that just keeps churning out every conceivable kind of product. Cell phones are no exception. The Chinese Ministry of Information Industry estimates that Chinese producers will turn out 340 million cell phones in 2006, including 250 million for export.

The growth was even more impressive in 2005, when China produced 303 million phones, up 30 per cent from the previous year. And the country exported 228 million phones, up a whopping 56 per cent from 2004.

A growing number of these phones were Chinese domestic brands -- 13.21 million phones, up 106.2 percent from the previous year. Almost half of those -- 6.05 million sets -- were Bird mobile phones.

**Cell Phones being used for Porn

It might not be terribly surprising, but Google research suggests cell phones are used to search out porn sites more frequently than PC searches.

Google's Mobile Search is what is used on cell phones to seek out websites and images. Two Google researchers, Maryan Kamvar and Shumeet Baluga analysed a batch of 1 million search queires and found that one in five mobile searches were on adult material.

This is more than twice as frequent than for desktop searches, where Google's figures are only 8.5 percent for adult searches. For PDAs its only 5 percent.

The researchers speculated that mobile phones are seen as more personal and private devices, and do not leave the same telltale surfing trail.

The Googlers speculated that people see their mobile phones as more personal and private, and therefore were more comfortable making adult queries. A cell phone can be a more favorable device than a home or work PC because phones are typically only used by one person.

These numbers do not quite line up with those provided by they ICM Registry -- the ICANN endorsed agency that monitors adult traffic. They say that more than 10% of all online traffic and 25% of all global Internet searching is adult-content oriented. In June 3005, ICM said there were over 100,000 adult webmasters worldwide operating more than one million adult domains.