San Diego Zoo.org: "ZOO LAUNCHES CELL PHONE RECYCLING PROGRAM AIMED TO PROTECT WILD GORILLAS FROM BUSHMEAT TRADE What happens to old out-of-date phones? It's estimated that more than 100 million cell phones are thrown away, or stuffed in a drawer, each year. The San Diego Zoo, along with Eco-Cell, a cellular phone recycling company, has launched a free-of-charge cell phone-recycling program at both the Zoo and San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park to encourage visitors to recycle. By recycling a phone, guests can feel confident they are helping protect local landfills from potentially hazardous chemicals found in cell phones and accessories such as arsenic, antimony, cadmium, cobalt, copper, lead, and zinc. Guests will also be helping to protect gorillas in central Africa from habitat loss and slaughter for the illegal bushmeat trade. Although cell phones and the extinction of gorillas may seem like an uncommon connection, according to wildlife experts, they are closely linked. 'Cell phones contain a rare ore called coltan, which is mined in central Africa. Increased mining operations over the past decade have greatly impacted the habitat and caused increased hunting pressure on gorillas and other wildlife in the area,' explained Karen Killmar, San Diego Zoo associate curator of mammals. 'The cell phone boom induced a flood of more than 10,000 illegal miners into protected parks in central Africa. Many of these miners, lacking food resources and encouraged by the companies that employ them, have hunted gorillas, elephants, and other species of mammals and birds to near extinction in these areas.'"