According to some estimates, there are an average of 130 million cell phones upgraded by American wireless phone users each and every year.

The average life of a cell phone amongst Americans is just 18 months which means there are millions and millions of old cellular telephones, many of which are in good working order, being needlessly thrown away or stored in a bottom drawer for eternity.

Again, one study estimates there are around 500 million used cellular phone handsets, chargers and accessories in American homes right now and with those 100+ million being upgraded each year this number can only increase.

That's a lot of wasted technology and also, a lot of wasted money because those wireless phones are not worthless, but are in fact worth money to you or for a charity of your choice and are desperately needed by people in developing countries who do not have access to expensive up to date technology, women's shelters and more.

In addition, the environmental hazards posed by old cell phones is not insignificant, especially at the rate at which they are being thrown away.

Despite it being illegal in some states to discard old cell phones into the garbage, there are still less than 20% being recycled at this present moment in time. When you consider cell phones contain some pretty toxic materials including cadmium, lead, arsenic, mercury and beryllium, whcih can leach from landfill sites into the ecosystem, as well as recoverable valuable elements like gold and palladium, that's a lot of needless waste of valuable finite materials.

The vast number of waste cellular phones poses a huge potential problem for future generations but it need not be that way. There are numerous ways in which you can put those old phones to use without resorting to dumping them into a landfill site. Better still, many of those efforts will also make you a little extra money, sometimes hundreds of dollars, which has to be better than cluttering up a sock drawer or dump site!

The first option you might like to consider, is to turn in preowned cell phones at one of the many cell phone sites which will pay you cash for your old phone.

In many ways this is a total win-win situation for all involved. Whether it be for yourself, who will get paid cash for your pre-owned wireless cell phone, or for the site itself, which will refurbish and resell that phone at a profit for itself, or to the end-user, who is often in a foreign country who doesn't have access to or can not afford newer technology, or finally, to the environment as this keeps a cell phone from being thrown away whilst at the same time, lowering the number of cell phones needing to be manufactured using those toxic and finite materials.

The following sites will buy old cell phones for cash...some even buy non-working broken cellular phones for preprocessing.

Send your preowned cell phones to Cell For Cash and be paid in cash for each qualifying handset. Depending on how much value there is left in your old cell phone, you will be paid anywhere from $5 to over $200 for each phone you send them. Some older phones are considered obsolete and will not be worth anything to this site but they will still take them for free recycling, reclaimation and safe disposal, keeping those toxic elements out of the ecosystem.

Cell For Cash puts your out-of-service retired cell phone to use by selling them in countries which can not afford or gain access to newer technology. If your cellular phone still works, then this site can recycle it in the best way possible - through reuse.

Help military families keep in touch when their family members are serving overseas by donating your retired preowned wireless telephones to Cell Phones For Soldiers!

Each cell phone donation sent by mail, or dropped off at a local drop-off point (check the site to find one in your area), will be sold to a cell phone reprocessing site who pays them for each unit they receive. CPFS doesn't directly send the phones to soldiers as most would not work overseas anyway, but instead, uses the money generated through these donations to buy calling cards and talk time for those soldiers serving around the world. To date they have managed to buy 500,000 minutes of talk time for members of the U.S. military.

Cell Phones For Soldiers does not have any restrictions on the types of cell phone donations they will accept unlike some other sites which may indicate your phone is obsolete and not wanted so if you've found you can not sell an old phone to wireless phone refurbishing company, then consider making a donation to a charity site like this one instead.