Old cell phones contain a number of dangerous materials that should be kept out of the waste stream.  Westchester County passed a cell phone recycling law that went into effect June 1, 2006, making it illegal to throw the phones in the garbage.  In January 2007, New York State also passed a law on Wireless Phone Recycling preempting the county law.

Now the EPA has partnered with consumer electronics manufacturers, retailers, and service providers creating Plug-In To eCycling with US EPA. This patnership offers you more opportunities to donate or recycle - to "eCycle" - your used electronics. Plug-In To eCycling is encouraging Americans to recycle their cell phones and accessories.  Recycling old cell phones, PDAs, cell phone batteries, chargers, or other accessories, recovers valuable materials and reduces energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

In almost every Westchester community, county residents can already find cell phone drop-off locations to recycle old phones.

For your security, personal information stored in cell phones dropped in the Verizon Wireless' HopeLine collection boxes is erased.