The Telephone

The Telephone

Invented in the mid 1870s by Alexander Graham Bell, the telephone revolutionized communication and has brought the world closer together.  Modern telephones have a microphone to speak into, an earphone or speaker that reproduces the voice of the other person, a ringer which makes a sound to alert you when a call is incoming, and a keypad to enter the telephone number of the telephone you are calling. The microphone and earphone are usually built into a handset which is held up to your face to talk. The keypad may be part of the handset or of a base unit to which the handset would be connected. Although originally designed for simple voice communications, most modern telephones have many additional capabilities. They may be able to send and receive text messages, take and display photographs, play music, and surf the Internet. These days’ Smartphone’s also integrate all computing needs.

Environmental impact of cell phones

There are 6.7 billion people on this planet and 61 percent have a cell phone subscription, that’s 4.1 billion. The average consumer will use their cell phone for less than a year, during that year it will use 4,221 mega joules of energy, the equivalent of 32 gallons of gas, and emit 112 kilograms of C02. Transferring 1 GB of data over a 3G network will use 939 mega joules of energy, the equivalent of 7.3 gallons of gas, and emit 17kg of C02. An unused but plugged in charger still draws about half a watt. If everyone left their charger plugged in ALLDAY, it would waste enough electricity to power 28,000 homes. 140,000,000 cell phones (4 per second) will end up in landfills this year. Leeching 80,000 lbs of lead into the earth, in that landfill is 4.7 tons of gold worth $56 million and 49 tons of silver worth $8.4 million. For every 515 cell phones recycled, it saves enough energy to power one home for a year. If all these thrown away cell phones were recycled, it would save enough energy to power 272,000 homes. To charge every cell phone in use on earth would require the equivalent of 584,000 gallons of gas and produce 35,000,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, imagine that every day, if we all charged our phones half as often it would be the equivalent of taking a million cars off the road. Although mobile phones only make up a small percentage of the e-waste mountain, manufacturers are aware of the need to address the issue. Leading makers, including Motorola, LG, Sony Ericsson and Philips, have all implemented eco-design aspects into their production lines, including reducing the amount of hazardous substances used in their products. Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer, produces a handset every nine seconds. It has decided to implement requirements set out in the EU Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive in all 10 of its factories around the globe. The RoHS Directive bans six substances (lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, PBB and PDBE) from products that are either made or sold in the EU.