As of: February 26, 2024, 6:00 p.m
By: Andreas Steppan
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A total of 1,200 old phones ended up in the cell phone collection box in the Tölzer Weltladen - much to the delight of Ernst Gürlich, who is in charge of the campaign.
© arp/archive
The world shop in Bad Tölz focuses on gold, silver and copper.
The collection of old cell phones is becoming increasingly successful.
Bad Tölz – The world shop on Tölzer Säggasse is all about gold, silver and copper.
Namely the proportions of these valuable raw materials that are contained in old cell phones.
With a cell phone collection campaign, the world shop is making a contribution to combating the waste of precious metals.
The volunteers are now reporting considerable success.
“We've got off to a good start,” says Ernst Gürlich from Königsdorf, who is overseeing the campaign.
1200 old cell phones collected in Bad Tölz
Since the Tölzer Kurier reported on the collection campaign in May 2023 under the headline “Weltladen saves copper, gold and silver”, over 350 old cell phones have been handed in there, according to Ernst Gürlich.
Since the campaign began, a total of around 1,200 discarded mobile phones have ended up in the Tölzer collection box.
When our newspaper reached Gürlich on the phone, he was on his way back from the world store, where he had just taken 20 cell phones out of the box that had been thrown there over the course of the previous week alone.
He now takes them with him and prepares them for shipping to a recycling company.
Improved conditions for collecting old cell phones
Recently, another factor has made his work easier.
In the past, due to DHL's shipping conditions, only cell phones that no longer had a battery could be shipped.
This gave the Königsdorf engineer a lot of tinkering to do.
He had to remove the batteries, which is not possible with many modern cell phones.
In these cases, he then tried to get the cell phones to work again, if necessary with old chargers.
Because if the phones could still be switched on, DHL also took over the transport.
But Gürlich reports that a way has now been found to avoid such complications.
“Mobile phones with batteries can now be sent as dangerous goods,” explains Gürlich.
If it's easy, he still takes out the batteries and disposes of them properly in Quartzbichl.
But for the other cases he has a simple alternative.
Bad Tölz: Decommissioned mobile phones go for recycling
The bottom line is: “The Weltladen Bad Tölz can now recycle all cell phones sustainably,” explains Gürlich and emphasizes: “Old cell phones are neither collector’s items nor waste, but are valuable resources.”
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Gürlich therefore hopes that the number of cell phones handed in will continue to rise.
“There are certainly a lot of discarded cell phones in the drawers after Christmas,” he says.
He points out that the world shop is now open every Wednesday at lunchtime, i.e. continuously from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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If the used cell phones are not simply thrown away but put into a regulated recycling cycle, then the precious metals are not lost but can be reused.
This is also important because both the extraction of raw materials and the disposal of electronic waste are associated with significant problems for the environment and in terms of human rights.
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