The cell phone's green angle

Check your pocket or your purse... If you're reading this blog, chances are there's at least one cell phone hiding in there.

And really, what harm can one little gadget do to the environment?

On its own, the single cell phone isn't so bad, but in the aggregate, cell phones really add up. And the folks at Say I Am Green have put together a fun infographic to put it all in perspective.

There's no "story" here, just a series of data points laid out in an engaging manner designed to get you to think.

The piece of green art (keep scrolling down) offers some eye-opening revelations, including these gems:

> 61 percent of the 6.7 billion people in the world have a cell phone subscription

> The average user tosses out his phone within a year of getting it

> In a year of use, a typical phone uses the energy equivalent of 32 gallons of gas and emits 112kg of CO2

and the doozy...

> 140 million cell phones end up in landfills every year, leeching 80,000 pounds of lead into the earth (not to mention $56 million worth of gold lost in there, too)

I'm guilty of never being able to throw away a cell phone. All of my old ones (and unused ones) sit, mostly in their original boxes, in a crate in a closet. What will I do with them? Probably nothing (though I feel like I should hang on to them just in case), but I don't want them to create an environmental hazard... and hey, maybe I can melt them down for that gold!

Check out the full infographic here.