There was a time in my life when my old cell phones would end up in a junk drawer or the kids’ toy box—my daughter loved playing with discarded cell phones, so imagine her joy when she got a working one! Point is, I had this suspicion I wasn’t supposed to throw them in the regular old trash can, but I wasn’t sure which recycle bin to toss it in either. Thank goodness Lakewood Elementary PTA board member Kim Schaefer has cleared it all up for people like me, and in the process, she’s bringing in dough for the school—yey!
She hooked up with a company that buys and restores or recycles old cell phones and ink jet cartridges as a way to fundraise, and she started collecting—first round, she got 114 phones and 200 cartridges by going house to house, hitting up coworkers and installing donation boxes at school and at Whole Foods.
Schaefer found this was an effective way to raise money for the school during tough economic times while protecting our Earth. “We have earned as much as $50 for one phone and often get between $20 and $30 for the Blackberries we collect," she says, “…to recycle valuable metals, keep dangerous elements out of the environment … and earn money for Lakewood Elementary at a time when the economy has negatively effected traditional fundraising efforts. Who can argue with that combination?”
Not me! The campaign has been so successful, Schaefer, whose 7-year-old daughter Rowan attends Lakewood Elementary, has launched phase two—you can drop your used cell or your used ink jet cartidges at one of the donation boxes at the school or inside Lakewood Whole Foods.
