My approach to recycling phones

I feel as though I have not yet explained the details of my plan to collect and recycle 'sleeping' mobile phones, as well as the challenges I faced and subsequent solutions I came up with when designing this project.

When I first found out there were no phone recycling services I required in Hokkaido -- ones containing a media shredder that had the capacity of mass-shredding phones to destroy their private information -- I knew I needed a method to deliver a large number of phones to Tokyo, in which there were such recycling centres.

However, it would be impossible to pass them through security if I used plane travel, and shipping them would present the risk of losing the devices: a risk I evaluated too great to take. It is also not an option to send the phones directly to the recycling firm due to their policy of only accepting hand-delivered phones.

That is why my final decision was to travel via train from Sapporo (where I live) to Hakodate, and then via bullet train down to the recycling business in Tokyo, and this way I could ensure the safe transport of the devices all at once.

The other aspect of my project plan is the cost of shredding the mobile phones. It costs 980 yen per phone in order to delete the personal information in the devices. The price per phone is calculated in the following way:

Certificate of issue, damage and data erasure = costs 1,480 yen for company

Selling of items and batteries = 500 yen revenue gained by company

1,480 -- 500 = 980 yen paid by the customer requiring the service

As a result, I concluded that a fundraising campaign would be necessary to cover mainly the cost of recycling the phones but also a portion of the travelling expenses.

I am in the process of starting up my fundraiser. This project serves no purpose but to make even the slightest of differences to reducing habitat destruction, due to the mining of rare metals, that could otherwise be recycled from old and unused phones.

I hope you understand where my fundraising idea stems from, and I thank you for taking the time to read this passage.