Grandmother Bev’s promotional efforts are helping the Starship Foundation in getting old mobile phones cleared out of home and office.
The Starship Foundation charity is set up to provide additional equipment, support and help to staff, patients and families - as an extra to state funding for Starship Hospital.
Bev’s a keen supporter of the Starship Foundation’s charity mobile phone recycling appeal. The appeal asks people to donate any old or outdated phones to Starship.
The Foundation is working in partnership with a well-established recycling company in Ireland, who will refurbish the donated phones, then resell them and donate 60 per cent of the proceeds back to Starship.
So far Bev’s efforts have seen hundreds of old mobile-phones recycled.
When the appeal got underway she got right in behind it taking the freepost recycling envelopes into three areas of the Invercargill hospital where she works.
She also instigated getting a story about the appeal in the local newspaper and the hospital newsletter. The story in the newsletter prompted a work colleague to encourage a local environmental waste company offer to help as a collection point.
“It sort of promoted itself – friends and colleagues at work said they’d help put the envelopes out,” says Bev.
Their efforts have seen about 1000 envelopes distributed in their area. “It’s hard to know how many have been returned with phones in them, but demand for the envelopes has been strong,” she says.
Bev had a special reason for getting involved in the recycling scheme. Two of her grandchildren have been treated at Starship Children’s Hospital in Auckland, including Ethan (4) who is the “face” of the fundraiser recycling campaign.
“I initially wanted to help – the grandchildren made it more personal. Both the children are now well, but it’s been a long haul,” says Bev.
According to the Ministry for the Environment there may be nearly a million mobile phones in New Zealand no longer in use. Ensuring they don’t end up in the landfill and some benefit comes from them is behind the Starship Foundation appeal.
Andrew Young, Chief Executive of the Starship Foundation, says 96 per cent of the phones collected will be reused in emerging countries. The appeal has three major benefits, he says.
“It reduces the number of phones going into landfill; money comes back to help Starship kids; and it provides much needed technology to emerging countries around the world.”
“In the first four weeks of the Starship Foundation appeal, 20,000 phones were collected,” he says.
Any phones which can’t be re-used are taken apart and the components recovered or recycled through a tightly monitored operation in the United Kingdom.
