NUS Zer0Waste PhoneCycle - Handphone Recycling Campaign

So I was going through the long list of emails in my National University of Singapore (NUS) account when I was engrossed in one. It read:

"As an extension to our Zer0Waste project aiming to recycle paper, aluminum cans and plastic bottles, Students Against Violation of the Earth (SAVE) and Campus Sustainability Committee (CSC) are collaborating with Nokia and TES-AMM to organize a handphone recycling campaign during Green Carnival 2008 @ Central Forum on 25 to 27 Aug 2008. This is your chance to do something for the environment as well as get something in return...

... For every spoilt handphone of any brand, with or without battery you recycle during Green Carnival 2008: Nokia would plant a tree in your name in Kalimantan complete with the precise latitude and longitude coordinates. You can monitor the growth of your tree via Google Earth or Yahoo Maps..."

There are also other benefits such as lucky draw and free gifts.

I feel that this recycling project is one of the more creative ones that I have come across. The organisers moved beyond the usual newspaper collection and old clothes collection to come out with a rewarding experience for recycling. Get a tree named after you? Sounds too good to be true.

This reminded me of an article in Time Magazine, titled Making Capitalism More Creative, where Microsoft Founder and Philanthropist Bill Gates said:

"It is mainly corporations that have the skills to make technological innovations work for the poor. To make the most of those skills, we need a more creative capitalism: an attempt to stretch the reach of market forces so that more companies can benefit from doing work that makes more people better off. We need new ways to bring far more people into the system — capitalism — that has done so much good in the world".

The Economists have a saying "People respond to incentives". How true. Donation drives get great response when celebrities perform (incentives for fans), lucky draw prizes are given, records are broken (fame/experience). Even when students sell flag to raise funds during flag day events, stickers are given to donors (The sticker "immunised" the donor from being approached again).

At the Grassroots level, several Residents' Committees have also worked with waste recycling companies whereby the latter rewards residents with can food when they submit their recyclable waste.

Just as Capitalism should be more creative, there should also be creative methods to protect the environment. Critics to this concept might point out that this might breed into a nasty culture where people ONLY respond to initiatives and not out of personal values. However, my stand is that the giving incentives to people who do good deeds are a good way to encourage others to participate as well. The end result is that more people are doing good deeds and it benefits society at large. Eventually, when the practice is prevalent and consistent, people would adopt it as a habit. Habit dies hard.

Here's a video about NUS Students Against Violation of the Earth (S.A.V.E):

Finally, after keeping the phones for so long (not worth selling), I can expend my phones in a way that I can contribute to saving the Environment (however small).