A new program at Dickerson Park Zoo lets you recycle your cellphones, smartwatches and tablets while helping the zoo and flamingos.
A box that's decorated with the birds it's meant to help, was placed in the zoo's gift shop Monday morning. That's where the public is encouraged to drop off old smart devices.
Dickerson Park Zoo Spokesman Joey Powell said the lithium used in batteries for those devices comes from Chilean flamingo habitat.
"The Atacama Desert is one of the locations. We're actually identifying more through the research, several more, but they live in salars, they feed in salars, which are salt mines, and the lithium is mined from that area," said Powell.
Salars are salt flats that form from evaporated prehistoric lakes. One is the Salar de Atacama in Chile.
Powell said the electronic devices they collect will be sent to ecocell, based in Kentucky, which works to mitigate the impact of electronics on the earth and its inhabitants, according to its website. Zoos across the country have partnered with the company to recycle electronics. Dickerson Park Zoo will get a certain amount of money for each item that it recycles.
"If you're a certain age, you probably remember recycling, recycling soda cans or keeping those and, you know, cashing them in. This is exactly really the same thing," she said.
Powell encourages you to wipe your devices clean before taking them to the zoo.
Items ecocell collects, according to its website, are:
- Cellphones/smartphones
- iPads/tablets
- iPods/mp3 players
- GPS
- Smartwatches
- Airpods/earbuds
- VR headsets
- Digital cameras and associated cords and cables
Powell encourages you to check drawers for old cellphones.
"The average home in America has anywhere from six to eight old cellphones just stuck in a drawer somewhere," she said. "And now we can actually, by working with ecocell in...Louisville, we can actually take those phones and then send it to them. They can get the lithium, get the phone ready to go, and then it goes on to even another organization in Oklahoma. And the lithium now can actually be recycled."
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