The new green-themed Reclaim made by Samsung is more than your standard phone with slick green branding — though there’s a bit of that too.

What’s green (or blue), smaller than a deck of cards and will remind you to unplug the charger from the wall after charging? The Reclaim, the new green-themed smart phone made by Samsung for Sprint, is loaded with a bunch of green content, a handful eco-conscious accessories and an attention to sustainable packaging that make it more “green” than most other phones out there.

But you can’t just slap a case made from forty percent corn plastic, dip it in green paint and call it green, can you? The folks at Sprint sent me the new Reclaim so I could answer those questions myself.

Read more of this story »

A flurry of emails has been flying around the web warning that cell phone use could be risky business for you and, if you have one, your baby. As an avid multitasker who has mastered talking on the cell phone while doing ten other things, baby in hand, I decided to do a little research to see, well, what the research says.

After poking around on this issue, I can tell you that I’m worried. I’ve passed a few of the articles I’ve found to my husband and he’s so worried that he is planning to deactivate our wireless router and hard-wire both of our computers this week-and he’s constantly turning my Blackberry off. This causes a bit of bickering given how dependent I’ve become on that damn little device. It’s the number I use for my consulting business, I use it for email and texting when I un-tether myself from my computer, and, like most people, my friends and family try me there first. Now, friends think I’ve forgotten them and clients think I’m a flake because I don’t answer their calls and don’t return messages for days until I’ve discovered them (my mommy brain can’t seem to remember to check messages if my phone isn’t on to tell me that I have them). The bickering stops as soon as my husband says “Would you rather scramble little Emerson’s brain?”

Read more of this story »

Researchers at the University of York have recently come up with a method of recycling that seems like it fell from the pages of a science fiction novel. They want to turn discarded television screens into components for biomedicine.

Read more of this story »

Chinese mobile phone manufacturer ZTE recently unveiled its Coral-200, a solar-powered cell phone. eNews 2.0 reports:

The phone model is powered through a pack of solar cells mounted on the top of it. In a nutshell, while the technical specs of the phone are not quite detailed at this moment, analysts do not expect that the device will do many things besides voice calling and text messaging, especially considering the price tag of the phone.

That price tag? Reportedly, 40 USD.

Sources: Inhabitat and eNews 2.0

The green parts

Built from 80 percent recyclable material with 40 percent of the phone casing made from corn-based bio-plastic. The Reclaim is 80 percent recyle-able material, not recycle-ed material. That is fairly normal. The bulk of material in most other cell phones can also be recycled and that’s why there is a market for used cell phones.

To Sprint’s credit, included in the box is a postage-paid cell phone recycling bag for you to drop your old phone in the mail to be scrapped for e-waste (which I filled three old phones sitting in a drawer I’ve been meaning to recycle).

Sprint has committed to recycle ninety percent of the phones they make by 2017. With current recycling rates at roughly one-third, Sprint admits they have a long way to go but are also quick to point out that they have collected roughly 18 million phones thus far and have increased recycling rates substantially over 2007.

I like the idea of the green content portals. Easily-accessed content from Planet Green including Best of Green, Five Simple Things, All Things Green and a Green Glossary from Planet Green. These shortcut keys access fast-loading pages of green content and info. Don’t expect links, images, flash, etc. These are fast-loading pages that provide quick access to basic green info, and for that purpose they are excellent.

I was also too-easily amused by the chirps, ribbits and other preloaded eco-sonic ringtones that keep with the Reclaim’s green theme.

Fortunately, the instruction manuals were not big, glossy tomes reprinted in seven languages. Only the “essentials” in manual literature were included in the package, but considering that several pages were filled with full-color images of people enjoying their new phone way too much, even that seemed a bit too much.

The paper that was included in the package was printed with soy inks on a paper stock that clearly had some percentage of recycled content in it, but nowhere on the package was that clearly labeled or otherwise discerned. Other than the plastic FedEx package the phone arrived in, the package itself has very little plastic, only two small bags.

Festooned with a litany of certification labels and brands, Sprint has clearly made some attempts to get the Reclaim some green cred — and most of it is deserved. Overall, I think Sprint has done more than pull of a green marketing coups. They have taken real steps towards cleaning up an industry that contributes an incredible amount of material into the global e-waste stream.

That is not to say there isn’t any room for improvement. Cutting back even more on printed materials and packaging waste and giving more attention to labeling and transparency would make the Reclaim even greener.

If this phone does anything, it helps show an industry that little steps can make a big difference when they are being manufactured at thousands of pieces at a time. Hopefully leading us to the day where a phone that pays attention to sutainability and cradle-to-cradle principles will become the norm, rather than the exception.

All photos except first one via Tim Hurst. Follow Tim on twitter.

Read more of this story »

In a sampling of two thousand recycled mobile phones, 99 percent were found to have sensitive data like banking information and confidential emails.

The sampling was done by Regenersis. They processed over 2 million handsets in 2008; that’s one handset every 15 seconds. During a random sampling in December they discovered how many mobiles had not been wiped clean: a lot!

Read more of this story »

Je-Hyun Kim’s Natural Year Phone design almost makes cell phones cool in my book. The phone, which is made up of hay, a screen, and keys, is designed only to last as long as its functional life cycle (2 years) before it biodegrades and falls apart.

Read more of this story »

Motorola has announced plans to launch the world’s first completely carbon neutral mobile phone, at CES 2009 in Las Vegas.

The shell of the W233 Renew is made entirely of recycled water bottles, and will be available via T-Mobile within the next three months. The struggling cell phone manufacturer has also teamed up with CarbonFund.org to offset the energy used in the manufacture, distribution and operation of each phone throughout its lifetime.

Read more of this story »

I don’t know about you, but I constantly picture radiation penetrating my brain when I’m talking on my cell phone. Omega Pharma, a Belgian company specializing in health products, claims it has created a device that can calm my fears— a chip that counteracts mobile phone radiation.

Read more of this story »

Keeping track of your carbon footprint can be hard; you may walk or take the bus everywhere, but how much CO2 is that cross-country plane trip letting loose? UbiGreen, a new cell phone application developed by Intel and the University of Washington, senses whether you’re in a plane, train, or car to let you know exactly what your carbon footprint is.

Read more of this story »

The Telecommunications Research & Action Center (TRAC) has just published their guide to slimming down your phone bills, which can save you up to half on your phone service.

Read more of this story »

GoodCleanTech reports that the Sony Ericsson Greenheart Concept phone was spotted at a Sony event last week in Copenhagen. The phone will be an amalgam of “green” factors, including a bio-plastic shell, HTML-based manuals, a recycled plastic keypad and an energy-efficient charger that uses only 3.5 mW of power during standby.

Read more of this story »

Ever since my daughter could hold our camera, we have shared it with her. Last year, her grandmother decided to buy her a digital camera for her birthday.  At first, we looked at several digital cameras designed for children; however, in the end, we decided to buy her a real camera that would last her many years. The quality of children’s digital cameras is poor, and we have made a commitment to giving gifts that last our children as many years as possible.  As an eco mom, I won’t buy junky toy emulations of technology designed for children that will only break and end up in a landfill.  As an artist and a photographer, I felt a good camera would help my young child develop her artistic expression.  Her compositions amaze me, and her photographs help me view the world through her “lens”.  I can see what is important or interesting to her by what she photographs.

Read more of this story »

He did, however, leave out the vibrate function, which was probably a good idea, and he couldn’t find a battery big enough to power the phone, so he has to plug it into a wall outlet.

Source 

The green parts

Built from 80 percent recyclable material with 40 percent of the phone casing made from corn-based bio-plastic. The Reclaim is 80 percent recyle-able material, not recycle-ed material. That is fairly normal. The bulk of material in most other cell phones can also be recycled and that’s why there is a market for used cell phones.

To Sprint’s credit, included in the box is a postage-paid cell phone recycling bag for you to drop your old phone in the mail to be scrapped for e-waste (which I filled three old phones sitting in a drawer I’ve been meaning to recycle).

Sprint has committed to recycle ninety percent of the phones they make by 2017. With current recycling rates at roughly one-third, Sprint admits they have a long way to go but are also quick to point out that they have collected roughly 18 million phones thus far and have increased recycling rates substantially over 2007.

I like the idea of the green content portals. Easily-accessed content from Planet Green including Best of Green, Five Simple Things, All Things Green and a Green Glossary from Planet Green. These shortcut keys access fast-loading pages of green content and info. Don’t expect links, images, flash, etc. These are fast-loading pages that provide quick access to basic green info, and for that purpose they are excellent.

I was also too-easily amused by the chirps, ribbits and other preloaded eco-sonic ringtones that keep with the Reclaim’s green theme.

Fortunately, the instruction manuals were not big, glossy tomes reprinted in seven languages. Only the “essentials” in manual literature were included in the package, but considering that several pages were filled with full-color images of people enjoying their new phone way too much, even that seemed a bit too much.

The paper that was included in the package was printed with soy inks on a paper stock that clearly had some percentage of recycled content in it, but nowhere on the package was that clearly labeled or otherwise discerned. Other than the plastic FedEx package the phone arrived in, the package itself has very little plastic, only two small bags.

Festooned with a litany of certification labels and brands, Sprint has clearly made some attempts to get the Reclaim some green cred — and most of it is deserved. Overall, I think Sprint has done more than pull of a green marketing coups. They have taken real steps towards cleaning up an industry that contributes an incredible amount of material into the global e-waste stream.

That is not to say there isn’t any room for improvement. Cutting back even more on printed materials and packaging waste and giving more attention to labeling and transparency would make the Reclaim even greener.

If this phone does anything, it helps show an industry that little steps can make a big difference when they are being manufactured at thousands of pieces at a time. Hopefully leading us to the day where a phone that pays attention to sutainability and cradle-to-cradle principles will become the norm, rather than the exception.

All photos except first one via Tim Hurst. Follow Tim on twitter.