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Deal With Broken Phones the 'Green' Way

Eileen Gunn

It showed me how hard it is to be an eco-conscious (or simply thrifty) consumer who buys less, keeps stuff longer and doesn't consume for the sake of it.

I was in the kitchen, some 30 feet from the office, when the phone began emitting static-filled staccato sounds. After a few days of lifting and dropping the receiver, turning the speaker-phone on and off, unplugging and replugging it, and letting my husband go through the same motions, I decided to call the company for help fixing what seemed to be a short in the speaker.

The phone carries a General Electric (GE Quote) logo, but it's made by a division of Thomson, a French company.

My best guess is that I bought it in 2003, which would be light years ago for many electronic devices, but not telephones. From my point of view, this phone isn't meaningfully different in features or capabilities from those that Thomson is selling today.

I wanted the customer service people to tell me what they thought the problem might be, if I could fix it myself or if they had an authorized repairperson who could.

Alas, the help desk rep wasn't a true techie who understood phones. Clearly following a script, she wound her way through advice for a bad phone line (I reminded her that the noise happened when the phone wasn't in use), and for static on a cordless phone (I reminded her that it had a cord). She suggested unplugging it for 10 minutes (I told her I'd tried that). Out of options, she asked how old the phone was. I told her. She told me that since the phone is out of warranty, it would be more cost-effective to buy a new one than to fix it.

The problem didn't seem dire enough to justify tossing out an entire phone, so I asked what to do if I wanted it repaired. She told me that the company had no authorized repair people, and suggested I seek out "a local service center in your vicinity." I asked her if that meant a telephone repair guy, and she said yes.

I can get a GE phone and cordless handset package similar to the one I have for $52 from Circuit City (CC Quote), and I'd get the tax write-off.

But the exchange with the Thomson rep bugged me. The upshot was that if the phone was more than a year old -- the length of Thomson's warranty -- that I should just chuck it aside and buy another one. How good can the phone be, if that's the case?

Through a spokesperson, the company clarified its policy. It used to allow customers to return broken phones regardless of age. They would send out a reconditioned replacement and keep the other phone to fix and send to someone else. But "Repair and reconditioned costs escalated, and it became more expensive to repair the phone than to actually replace it with a new one," she said in an email. They seem to be saying that it became too expensive for the company to repair the phones for free. That doesn't necessarily mean it's cheaper for me to buy a new one than to have the old one fixed.

And what if I just believe that things should be fixed if they can be? What if I just don't want to add another phone to the landfill?

Thomson tells me that the average consumer replaces his phone every two and a half years because "they want upgraded features, such as DECT 6.0 interference-free technology, which uses a more efficient frequency, reducing battery consumption and power use."

Clearly, they were trying to suggest that I'm an outlier, and after five years it's high time I just bought a new phone. But while I've had friends express enthusiasm over the smallness of a new iPod (APPL Quote) Shuffle, the speed of a new laptop and the cool new features on a cell phone, I have yet to have even my geekiest companions talk about how happy they are with their DECT 6.0 landline. Besides, I have a newer landline that I use for a home phone and it's not remarkably different in form or function from my older office line.

This just-toss-it-out-and-buy-more attitude irked me even more when I looked up telephone recycling and telephone disposal online and found no information whatsoever. It seems that because phones have only needed to be plugged in recently, as they've incorporated digital answering machines, caller ID and other computer-chip-aided features, people tend to forget that they're electronic devices.

You can find scads of information on the e-waste created by cell phones, PDAs, PCs and televisions and an increasing number of ways to donate or recycle these items.

According to Greener Choices, the circuit boards, switches, batteries and plastic components in electronic devices can contain chromium, nickel, zinc, cadmium, mercury and toxic flame retardants. "Electronic equipment contains toxic materials that can pose health and environmental risks, particularly when disposed of in landfills, where toxins may leak into the soil and ground water," the group says. I have to believe that at least some of that applies to my plastic, digitized phone.

The public relations person representing Thomson did some legwork and had better luck than I did. She found some organizations that recycle phones via Earth911 and My Green Electronics. Most of them weren't really close by. But she did mention Build It Green, a great local organization that sells salvage and surplus building materials. Its Web site says it takes phones and answering machines.

She also directed me to the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation's Web site, where I could find places that will recycle the batteries in the cordless portion of my phone set.

Unfortunately, I don't actually have batteries for that anymore because it stopped working a while ago. It seems that several nearby outlets of Radio Shack (RSH Quote), Office Max (OMX Quote) and Rite-Aid (RAD Quote) would take them if I had them.

And turning to my trusty community list-serv, I got recommendations for two local shops that repair phones, though I'll have to call to find out if they can fix mine and if it indeed will be worthwhile.

My conclusion about Thomson, meanwhile, is that in the absence of having easy-to-sell innovations to drive new sales, they're making inexpensive phones that aren't meant to hold up nearly as well as the AT&T(T Quote) wall phone that hung in my parents' kitchen for some 20 years. And they aren't supporting customers who want to get a little extra mileage from their phone with minor repairs.

Shelling out for a new phone every couple of years while tossing the defective one to the curb, perpetuates a buy-consume-and-toss cycle that is neither green nor economical.

The eco-conscious and reluctant consumer in me will keep this in mind when I do -- eventually -- have to buy a new phone.