junk mobile phones give way to flowers

February 13th, 2008 comments (1) stumble it! digg it! by: technabob

Ever wonder what to do with your old cell phone when you’re ready to upgrade to the latest and greatest? Why not bury it in the ground? That’s what a group of scientists will have us doing if they have their way.

Researchers in the UK have devised a new mobile phone body which can simply be tossed into the compost heap, and will disintegrate within weeks. Once the phone’s shell has broken down, an embedded sunflower seed is released into the earth, sprouting life anew from your wayward technological garbage.

A team at the University of Warwick’s Warwick Manufacturing Group, in conjunction with PVAXX Research & Development Ltd. and Motorola used a special biodegradable polymer which is completely functional under normal working conditions, yet starts to rapidly decompose when placed in compost. Now they haven’t solved the problem of what to do with all those nasty toxins in your phone’s electronic components and battery pack, but at least they’ve got a solution for all those cheap plastic cases.

For those of us with iPhones, we’ll just have to melt down our aluminum and glass beauties using conventional recycling techniques when that iPhone 2.0 eventually comes along.

[via Baby Ruthless via Roadside Scholar]

filed under:  mobile tech strange + wonderful

February 13th, 2008 comments (1): stumble it! digg it! by: technabob