A drawer in her dad’s office back home is a graveyard for five of Claire Willis’ old companions.

“Mostly I just don’t know what to do with them,” Willis says. “It would be wasteful to throw them away, and I feel like I should at least keep the one I painted with nail polish in junior high, just because it’s pretty.”

Willis, Oskaloosa freshman, isn’t amassing content for a junk drawer, but is instead holding onto things that have been close by her side since she was in 6th grade: her cell phones.

More than 500 million cell phones lie unused in the United States, according to an April 2007 report by the Environmental Protection Agency. The report estimated that 150 million more phones will be discarded this year. The number promises to grow each year, and the small devices can have big effects on your health if, when evicted from the drawer, they are thrown away rather than recycled.

“A cell phone is so small that you don’t even think twice about throwing it away,” says Gerald Hartman, lead technician at Kansas E Recycle, a private electronics recycling service. “A computer is so bulky, most people know they should recycle it.”

The number of cell phone users in the United States more than tripled from 1996 to 2006 according to a survey by the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association. The rapid availability of cell phone upgrades has caused the increase in cell phone waste, as consumers purchase more newer phone models and more of their older phones enter the waste system.

Discarded cell phones are a sliver of the growing problem of electronic waste, or e-waste: unwanted electronics that pose health and environmental risks if not properly recycled. Cell phones, along with computers, televisions and household appliances, contain lead and mercury, two metals that can cause damage to the brain and the peripheral nervous system.

“They interfere with a lot of normal body processes,” says Val Smith, professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology and the environmental studies program. “When it comes to heavy metals, my own bias is to make every effort to minimize exposure because they are such potent poisons.”

Smith references the second edition of the textbook Aquatic Pollution by Edward A. Laws, which outlines studies that found lead to interfere with the functioning of enzymes and to damage tissue throughout the central and peripheral nervous system. Lead accumulates most in bones and teeth, whereas mercury collects in the brain, destroying cells in the cerebellum and frontal cortex, which control movement and balance and reasoning and personality respectively.

Smith says that because lead and mercury are excreted from the body extremely slowly, continued exposure to even small amounts can be harmful, as they can accumulate and place a greater burden on the body. Although cell phones contain only small amounts of these metals, Smith says the rapid rate at which phones are being discarded can potentially make them hazardous, and putting them in landfills with the rest of our trash isn’t wise.

“My worry is landfills that have been used for a long time, prior to modern regulations, and have no guarantee of not leaking,” Smith says. “In a properly constructed landfill, there is an impervious liner so material placed in the landfill is trapped in place and can’t leak into a water supply.”

Though the country as a whole does not consider e-waste hazardous­—only 12 states have laws banning some form of e-waste disposal in landfills—businesses in Lawrence have programs in place to keep toxic materials in electronics out of the environment.

Another option for students wanting to get old cell phones off their hands in an environmentally safe way is through the online business RIPMobile, which pays for old cell phones in the form of gift certificates good at businesses like Circuit City and Starbucks. “We make recycling feel like consuming, which everyone likes to do,” says RIPMobile President and CEO Seth Heine, who started the business in 2005.

Anyone recycling a cell phone through RIPMobile visits the business’ Web site, www.ripmobile.com, where they can calculate the phone’s value and choose the business through which they want to be reimbursed in gift certificates. Customers also have the option of donating the return on their old cell phones to charities. Phones that have resale value are cleared of all data, refurbished and sold at a low price throughout developing areas in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Western Asia. This process is what allows RIPMobile to pass on part of the phone’s worth back to its original owner. Even if a phone has no value, RIPMobile still accepts it and recycles it under a no-landfill policy and in accordance with electronic waste standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. The phone’s contents go through a recycling process that’s safe for both humans and the environment, and by the end of the process, the potentially toxic metals in the phone have been reclaimed and can be made available for reuse. Heine says that although metals can never be destroyed, they can be captured and reused infinitely.

Heine started RIPMobile to draw attention to a type of waste that even those who consistently recycle tend to overlook. College students make up a large part of his market, as he says most students upgrade their cell phones annually. “This is the quickest way to convert a drawer full of toxic waste into money for stuff you want,” Heine says.

Andy Haverkamp, Hoyt freshman, recently bought a new cell phone, and though he admits feeling a bit sentimental toward his old device, he thinks RIPMobile could find a better home for it. “It’s still a good phone if anyone needs it,” Haverkamp says. “We’ve been through a lot, but I’d be willing to destroy our bond for a couple bucks, and if it keeps lead and mercury out of the environment.”

Genevieve Linville, Paola senior, says she’ll also consider using RIPMobile to recycle her old cell phone, which at the moment is a toy for her little sister. “I think people should want to recycle,” Linville says. “But this is good motivation to do it, especially for college students because we’re so poor.”