Look at your cell-phone. Right now. Look at it. Miraculous little thing, isn’t it? It plays your favorite games, it connects you to an entire realm of information and it can alternately function as a GPS, a personal library or a simple flashlight. You can even call people with it.

 
Twenty years ago, this small thing you’re holding in your hand is exactly what everyone thought they would have in the future. Fifty years ago, it would have been inconceivable. And for the past year and a half, it’s been your constant companion.

 
Wait. It’s been over a year and you still have that old thing? Hell, get a new one already.

 
What, don’t you want to keep up with the times?

 
If you haven’t already gotten rid of your cell phone, perhaps out of a misguided sense of loyalty, take heart in the fact that your average American will throw away their old cell phone in favor of a new one every 18 months or so. We still haven’t quite beaten Japan’s turnaround of nine months, but we’re getting there, so don’t worry.

 
Experts have stated that there will soon be more mobile subscriptions then actual people on the planet.

 
Imagine what an accomplishment that is, and then imagine how many phones must be thrown away every year. Just about every other form of electronics has a similar new-to-junk rate, with 400 million electronic products being thrown away last year in just the U.S. alone. So even if you don’t have a cell phone and felt left out in the above paragraphs, rest assured that you too can participate in the new American pastime of throwing your miracle box away in order to get a newer, shinier one.

 
Oh, and you don’t have to worry about recycling the stuff. It’s certainly possible to recycle your old electronics – stores such as Best Buy and Staples have handy disposable systems just for that purpose, and the EPA’s website even has a handy guide to find the one nearest to you. But why bother? Only eight percent of the population in the U.S. actually recycles their electronics, and there’s no reason that you shouldn’t follow suit.

 
A few naysayers may point out that cell phones and electronics have several metals such as arsenic, lead, copper, coltan and cadmium classified as persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals (PBTs) which might poison the nearby environment. But these fears are exaggerated. There is no local environment that is badly damaged just by thrown out cell phones.

 
No, you’d have to go all the way to the small town of Guiyu, China for that, where improperly stored and disposed of electronics have resulted in several tons of rice being contaminated with cadmium, which results in cancer and lung disease, among others. Just being in Guiyu leaves a burning sensation in visitors’ lungs and eyes, but since you’ll never be visiting there, it’s not something that should concern you.

 
Remember, throwing out all those old laptops means more work for the people who mine the materials to make the bright shiny new one. Gold, coltan and other such metals are called “precious” for a reason – they’re extremely hard to find and process, so those who have that hard job are thankful to be given the motivation to complete the task.

 
So when you finally throw out that once high-tech piece of crap, you are getting the thanks of the grateful soldiers of Rwanda and Uganda, who according to several sites such as ABC News now have an even better reason to strip mine the native jungles of the Congo for coltan, destroying the habitats of both endangered elephants and gorillas in the process, not to mention the loss of human life. Those working in the gold mines thank you too, as they continue to pour cyanide on tons of rock to extract a metal infamous for being the most ecologically hazardous to mine.

 
So take another look at your cell phone, thank it for its year of good use, and toss it in favor of a new one with even more memory and better screen resolution. And don’t bother recycling the old one, or worrying about the precious metals that will now soak pollutants into the ground instead of being remade into a new cell phone or other form of electronic device. You have followed the example of millions of others before you; instead of recycling your old stuff, you sent it off to the magical land known as Not Your Problem.