Donate
Your Cell Phone, Earn Money for Smith
Don’t
throw away that old cell phone. Instead, recycle it and help
raise money for students from local public schools to visit
Smith.
 The Smith Science Center’s
Educational Outreach Office, in a partnership with the telecommunications company
Motorola, is collecting old cell phones for recycling. Motorola will pay the
college for every cell phone donated to the cause.
Simply drop your old cell
phones either in the electronics recycling kiosk at the Campus
Center (first floor near the café entrance) or in the Science Outreach Office, Burton 102.
Motorola will pay Smith for
each phone donated, between $.50 and about $15, explained
Thomas Gralinski, outreach coordinator for the Smith Science
Center, depending on the components of the phones that can
be reused or recycled.
Though the program will accept
all phones regardless of condition, Motorola will only pay
for donated phones that are intact, with the display not
cracked, the hinge working (for flip phones) and the internal
board not exposed, Gralinski explained.
The Science Center
will use proceeds from the program to help transport local
public school students for educational visits to Smith, said
Gralinski.
“The Science Center Educational Outreach Office has been working with a number
of schools this past year,” he said. “This seems like a good way for us to earn
some money that would be dedicated to helping the local schools enhance their
science and engineering programs and bring attention to recycling.”
Gralinski worked with STRIDE
students Renee Robilliard ’13 and Carlie Dennison-Leonard ’13
in participating in Motorola’s “Race to Recycle” program, which partners with
schools nationwide to encourage mobile phone recycling.
The transportation funds
raised through the recycling effort are essential for schools
hoping to visit Smith, said Gralinksi. Last January, he said,
after ten Smith students visited local classrooms through
a Science Teaching Fellowship program, teachers in the schools
wished to visit Smith with their classes but lacked the money
for busing.
Also, Gralinski works with STEM
RAYS (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Research
Academies for Young Scientists), a local program that connects
students and teachers with faculty at area colleges for science
and math interactions and experiences. Part of the “Race to Recycle” funds would assist in transporting
STEM RAYS students to Smith to participate in the Engineering Design Clinic,
visit the fabrication lab in McConnell Hall and engage in engineering activities.
Other groups take tours of the Science Center.
But first, the students have
to get to Smith.
“I would be thrilled if we could earn $500,” said Gralinski, “and more than that
would just allow us to help more schools.” |
