Given that 25 percent and another 16 percent for almost 40 percent are either giving it to friends or reselling their phone, that's even better than recycling. Using used stuff is the ultimate recycling. It's sure of lot easier, environmentally friendlier, and cheaper to ship an item instead of melting it down for scrape. Hurray! I think we're actually doing a pretty good job. We just need to work on the folk who are leaving their old phones collecting dust at home.

I have two options locally.

One is they go to a women's shelter for the abused; the phones get reactivated & the basic service paid for by the shelter.

The other is a senior citizens group. The best ones here tend to be the phones with larger type for any visual problems.

However, even though reuse is better than recycling, I find it's better just not to have to find a new home for the thing in the first place. Buying new 'toys' so often - and that's how I see some of these things - is why the old stuff gets shoved in a closet or dumped in a landfill.

I have friends who are like kids after Xmas. Old toy boring, time for new one, toss the old.

Not all cell phones are still usable. I had a very old cell phone that I originally bought 5 or 6 years ago, and finally had to give up when my prepaid service stopped supporting TDMA. Even the women's shelter didn't want it because it couldn't get a signal. I wanted to recycle it, but couldn't find any place that would take it. (I tried a couple of places that offer to buy cell phones, but they all said this phone had a value of zero and wouldn't take it.)

I clicked on the link to the survey, and it did have a way to find out how to recycle your old Nokia phone. Ironically, though, the pop-up that helped you find a recyling center wouldn't work on my old computer. I guess I'll have to recycle my old computer before I can find a place to recycle my cell phone!

I'll donate my current cell when I'm done and all others to a local animal shelter, though I don't know exactly what they do with them, they'll take them. But I'm keeping my first one.

Technology has changed so much since I was a kid, and I'm keeping the cell as a reminder. It's the size of a remote control and very clunky, but not all that old. But it's obsolete today.

It's kind of like keeping one's butter churn or typewriter. "Look kids," I can say thirty or forty years from now. "This was a cell in the nineties. Quaint isn't it?" Maybe a museum will want it.

Sprint has or had a 'recycling' program where they would send you a box and could mail in your old phone for a $10 credit. Maybe if they gave more than 5% of the value of the phone based on what they charged ME, I'd be more eager to send them an old phone. Especially since you have to wait about 6 months for the check. If I could give it Good Will for a writeoff I would but they won't take it.

There are charities besides Goodwill who will take them--often the same ones who will take old computers.

As it happens, the Goodwill stores in my area DO accept computers--but not old TVs or cell phones. I ended up donating all of that stuff (computers, old TV, and phone) to a group called Graybears. (And I will get a tax writeoff, provided I come up with enough other stuff to make itemizing worth it this year. There's a first time for everything!)

GCF and Goodwill, Veterans of America etc are all around here. If I have to go to the next county I'm not doing it. It will just sit in the drawer forever.

Once I lost my cellphone. I had the choice between paying about $200 to cancel my service contract and paying about $200 to buy a new phone without the large instant rebate you get when signing a new contract. And I wasn't getting a fancy phone with a camera or mp3 ringtones or anything else special (well it was special then; now it's just standard). So the next time I renewed my contract and upgraded my phone I held onto the old one, just in case. I knew it wasn't obsolete and would still work with the provider if I lost the new one. But now another two years have passed and I've upgraded again. So that old, old phone is no doubt really worthless, but I'll try to recycle it while I hang onto the the new old phone as a back-up. I actually think there are a couple of bins on my university campus for this type of electronic equipment.

millions of cell phones getting out of work by pretending to be sick.

Malingering cell phones. It's a national health crisis.

Many cellphone stores have bins where you can drop your old cellphone for donation to a woman's shelter or other charity. It is very likely that you have a cellphone store in your county.

Minor correction: 44 percent may be a plurality but not a majority, as stated.

Poor Chinese sit around their fires and melt the solder and other metals from recycled circuit boards. They sell the toxic mess. The material is exported by industrial nations who use mountains of this stuff. Perhaps this practise has changed, especially with the Olympics. Apparently the McCain campaign has a plan to ship this stuff free to Iran, you can put together the text of his proposal without much trouble.