Last updated April 12, 2019
The University of Texas at Arlington in the United States are having to install new bins for the purposes of cell phone recycling after suspicions were raised that people may be stealing used cell phones from the old boxes. The Sustainability Office at the university is replacing the five bins previously used for the collection of old cell phones for recycling purposes with six new style bins that will have better security and be more difficult to break into. The five old bins were located in Davis Hall, the Central Library, the University Center and the Maverick Activities Center. The new bins will replace the old ones in the same locations, with the new one possibly heading for University Hall, according to Meghna Tare, the director of the Sustainability Office.
“Someone took out phones from the old one in Starbucks,” Tare notes. “We noticed that it was full one day, and there were fewer phones the next.” Locks on the new bins should make such theft much more difficult than previously, Tare adds, also saying that the new bins should all have been in place by the beginning of this week. The department receives two US dollars for every old cell phone that is recycled with the new bins, whereas with the old bins the recycling company employed to take responsibility for the disposal of the used cell phones instead donated the money to charity. “We aren’t doing this for the revenue,” Tare claims. “Whatever we get will be used towards sustainable initiatives.”