We love the Earth, and apparently so do Sprint and Samsung. The two companies have just introduced the
Reclaim, a super-eco cellphone made from 80 percent recycled materials. The device -- a stout, sliding, QWERTY message-friendly model -- is constructed from "bio-plastic" materials made from corn, is free of PVC, and mostly free of BFR (brominated flame retardants)... which are apparently pretty bad. The phone also has a 2 megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, can accept microSD cards (we assume) up to 32GB, and has Sprint Navigation onboard. The packaging will be eco-friendly as well, as it's constructed from 70 percent recycled materials and printed with soy-based ink. The carrier will be selling the Reclaim in "Earth Green" or "Ocean Blue" come August 16th for $50 (after a $30 instant rebate and $50 mail-in rebate) with a two-year contract. Additionally, $2 of that profit will be funneled to the Nature Conservancy's Adopt an Acre program. Finally, a phone that goes with your Prius.
posted August 6th 2009 9:53AM
Now we can finally do a more interesting experiment of cellphones making popcorn.
it would be cool in you could "recycle" it in your microwave.
Is the charging dock called the Cornhole?
no, but you are a cornhole.
Wow, way to totally kill the comedy, commander buzzkill.
corn-blimey!
I thought you said Cornfed from Duckman...
For you city folk out there:
This is made of the same type of corn that is used for making animal feed, ethanol, corn syrup, corn flakes, and other good products.
Pop Corn comes from a different variety of the crop. As well as sweet corn- what you eat from the can (which is a pity- Sweet Corn is Ripe here in Iowa).
That's pretty cool.
They had me right up until "Sprint."
Looks like they could have worked at reducing their over packaging some...
Why does it need air holes? Does it come with a free hamster?
@ Smart People Play Tuba:
It damn well better
Maybe it's full of worms to aid in biodegrading it for us.
and how is the packaging made out of less recycled materials than the phone???
As an added benefit, if you get stranded somewhere you could eat the phone and the packaging to survive.
Yeah, but it's show in your feces.
xD had to say it.
so instead of throwing your phone out the window when you get mad, you eat it?
No, you just throw it out the window like normal but then can only fine you 20% of the littering fee.
That's pretty cool!
"all you have to do is heat it up!!!"
"they're eating her!
and now they gonna eat me!
OOOO MY GOOOOD!!!!!!"
Oh god, I have to say it.
This is waaaay too corny.
So is your joke.
*Insert Corny Joke Here*
Sweet now we can talk on cell phones instead of having reasonable food prices.
AGREED!!!
Ethanol production should stop also. It doesn't help the environment and if you care about carbon (which is not a pollutant), then ethanol has a bigger footprint.
Exactly! Like oil, which there's huge quantities to use while we transition to the future, instead of using it we decide to burn our food.
Typical cheap American worried more about money than the real issues at hand
@Jordan
huh? I don't think you understand.
It's a fact that the price of food in third world countries have more than double, even 4x the amount because of the subsidies for corn-based food. Even pasta in Italy has over doubled in price.
Now for some - it is a big deal that the price of food doubled. So who is the selfish ones here? The ones driving their bio-fuel cars with their pretentious attitudes - or the ones driving gasoline? You can't eat gas.
And I won't even bring up the increase in smog and decrease in air quality from Biofuels.
Corn isn't the only product used to make ethanol. In fact, it's very inefficient. Algae is a better alternative considering there are very quick generation times, and the algae doesn't need to be destroyed to create it. Oil is a finite source that's being quickly depleted, and batteries sit in landfills forever after their charges cycles are used up. Burning ethanol has a far less impact than either of those and once the process of making it becomes more refined, it should be exclusively used.
@Scuubs
Agreed- Ethanol through soy or algae = a workable and proven solution. Ethanol through corn = more expensive and polutive than gasoline while driving up food costs.
The only reason corn-based ethanol is even around (and it's really only around in the U.S.) is because the large and powerful corn farming lobby figured out they can get paid more money that way than if people just eat the stuff. It's a rubbish fuel, as previous commenters explained.
Anyway, how is a phone 'made from corn' recycled, exactly? Had the corn been _used_ before? Is it, in fact, made of poop?
And - soy-based ink? That would be soy, the crop for which large swathes of rainforest are being merrily chopped down around the world?
Thank god some of you people make sense.
your comment and replies (sans-jacob) show me that not all tech people are moronic über-liberals that think anything with buzz words attached to it are good.
There is nothing environmentally friendly about this phone, recycling and, as you say before, corn based ethanol cause more pollution then they save.
If your worried about CO2 your better off not recycling.
If your worried about land-pollution (its not a buzz topic right now like it was in the early 90s so no one cares) then you can recycle.
Either way ethanol is a waste of time.
so you prefer to keep using fossil fuels to make your plastic things?
note: about 4% of the world's annual oil production (roughly 84.5 million barrels per day) is used as the core ingredient in plastic, and another 4% is used for the energy to transform the oil into plastic.
Mmm... Radioactive corn...
Prius? That's a lunchbox!
So, you're saying this thing is INCREDIBLY FLAMMABLE? Thanks, but I'd rather eat my corn than make a cellphone out of it.
So they're Reclaiming a healthy environment?
I'm tired.
anyone watch King of Corn? not that renewable plastic is a bad thing, but jesus. corn is in everything.
Sooo....now you can call tell tell everyone you are starving?
so this phone may do fine in terms of sales, but chalk it up to the qwerty, NOT the eco bullshit
A couple of restaurants in the area are using the corn based plastic cups. Really interesting because you cant tell the difference. Its great to see this technology expand into other products. With cell phones being so disposable it only makes sense that companies are going this route, I only wish all plastic products would go this route.
It is all a lovely idea, in theory, but if some of these PLA (polylactic acid) based plastics get into the regular PET recycling stream, they turn to goo and the whole batch is unrecyclable.
So, when we're done with the phone we can just bury it in the ground, right?
Wow---this is too funny. DirecTV was giving me a line just two days ago that the reason they send 5 year old boxes to new subscribers is to cut down on the amount of used boxes going to landfills (I'm sure it has nothing to do with cutting costs on their bottom line!). I was thinking until they make receivers out of corn, wheat-grass, or some other biodegradable material they're going to wind up in landfills regardless--then I read this. I'm now going to request all my electronics be made out of peanut brittle! Woooo hooooooo!
does it blend?
Yes -- resulting in the tastiest polenta you're ever had.
Corn again? For the good of man kind (specially Americans), corn lobbyists should all die.