Saving Old Ink Cartridges Raises Money for Elephants
One mans rubbish is another’s treasure, this is certainly the case for elephants. By recycling your used printer cartridges and old mobile phones, it helps us to raise money for the elephants. It is simple and easy to do.
SOME FACTS
· 24.5 million new phones were purchased in the UK last year
· By 2009, around 1 billion handsets will be sold each year in the world
· There are 70 million Mobile Phone subscribers in the UK, which is replaced on average every 12 months
· An estimated 80 million Mobile Phones are kept in cupboards and drawers
· Less than 10 % of all unused Mobile Phones are recycled
· Mobile Phones contain substances like cadmium, arsenic and mercury that need to be disposed of in a safe and environmentally friendly manner
· More than 1.1 billion inkjet cartridges are used annually around the world - laid end to end this would be 129 times as long as the Great Wall of China
· Each discarded empty laser printer cartridge adds approximately three pounds of waste to our landfills
· The plastic used in a typical cartridge is made of engineering grade polymers and is expected to take up to 1000 years to decompose
· More than 30 million inkjet cartridges are dumped each year in the UK (1800 tonnes) - the same weight as 18 Blue Whales or 257 adult male elephants.
