Volume 3, No. 19. October 10,2003
They can hear them
now
The most overused phrase in the English language: win-win. OK, so here’s
a win-win win-win program.
Happy Hollow Park
& Zoo in San Jose, California, helps orangutans in the wild, various charities
around the country, the environment and local residents with a cell phone recycling
program which it began last April, an idea other zoos already are picking up.
Vanessa Rogier, Happy Hollow’s public relations and marketing director,
said a friend of hers started a cell phone recycling program to raise money
for her dog and cat rescue center. Rogier liked the idea. “We took it that
step further: we don’t get anything, other than that this is a great program.”
Happy Hollow has
become a permanent collection point for used cell phones. When a hundred are
gathered, the zoo sends them to ReCellular in Michigan, where many of the phones
are refurbished, and those that can’t be are properly disposed. “The
majority we get coming through are pretty decent phones,” Rogier said.
ReCellular donates some of the phones to various non-profit organizations, and
sells the rest, with some of the proceeds going to the donator’s selected
charity. For Happy Hollow, that charity is the Balikpapan Orangutan Society,
a conservation organization started in 1991 devoted to protecting wild orangutans
and their habitats.
So far the zoo
has channeled through about 1,200 phones and earned about $1,000 for orangutan
conservation, Rogier said. “We’ve gotten phones from The Netherlands,
Kansas, the East Coast,” she said, helped along by a link on the BOS site
www.orangutan.com. However, it is the
local population—mobile phone saturated Silicon Valley—that has really
taken hold of the program.
“We did an
event about a year ago, a Conservation Marketplace with a flea market and silent
auction, and it raised some money,” Rogier said. “But it dawned on
me that people are unbelievably busy. They were into it, but they couldn’t
embrace it. We decided to start a conservation program that people can do here
that makes them feel empowered.” Right up front, the Happy Hollow program
helps the environment by getting people to properly recycle phones; at the end
of the line, orangutans get better living conditions; along the way, nonprofit
organizations get new used phones.
Happy Hollow Park & Zoo, meanwhile, get local publicity and a bit of leadership status among the nation’s zoos. “So far about 15 other zoos have contacted me in regards to starting their own cell phone conservation,” Rogier said. “I think it’s great. There’s over 200 million cell phones sitting in people’s drawers. I just want a million. The more the merrier.”
THE LOOP is written and produced by Eric Minton, Minton Enterprises, LLC. To see more examples of Eric Minton's work and Minton Enterprises services, visit www.ericminton.com.
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