Environment
Giant Christmas pine tree made by used cell phones
  • | VietNamNet | December 08, 2011 11:14 PM

A 4.5 metres pine tree made of 2,500 secondhand cell phones is now on display at an electronic store in My Tho city, the southern province of Tien Giang.
The story’s employees began collecting failed hand phones since April as “materials” to create this “Christmas tree.”

Ten people worked for 15 days to make the ‘tree”, which is 4.5m high and has 32 layers of “leaves.” The tree is nearly 500kg in weight.

The store’s manager Tran Hoang Quan said that they made the tree as a message to the local community in protecting the environment but cutting down the volume of technological waste, which is a big problem of many countries in the world.
Quan explained that a cell phone is made by hundreds of chips and many components which contain toxic and hard-to-decompose elements like lead, plastic, bronze or mercury. If breakdown cell phones are discharged to the environment, they can “poison” the environment while they can be recycled.

Vietnam has around 110 million of cell phones in use. The average lifespan of this product is around two years. It is estimated that around 50 million cell phones become waste each year, totaling around 400 tonnes.

Quan said that after the Christmas, this special “Christmas tree” will be auctioned to raise fund for charity. The store will continue collect waste cell phones for recycling. 

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