BC collecting cell phones for domestic violence awareness month

The BC Women’s Resource Center has teamed up with HopeLine from Verizon Wireless to collect used cell phones. The cell phones will be recycled to benefit survivors of domestic violence and promote domestic violence awareness. The cell phone collection will take place for the entire month of October. Students, faculty and anyone else who would like to donate their used phones can drop them off at the Women’s Resource Center at McElroy 141, 140 Commonwealth Ave, Chestnut Hill, MA. Additionally, students that don’t have a used phone with them on campus, but have one back home, can have relatives mail the used phones using a pre-paid mailing label.

HopeLine scrubs all donated phones to ensure customer information is removed. Verizon Wireless also recommends that consumers scrub their wireless phones before donating their devices to the HopeLine program. Here are some easy tips on wiping a phone:

1. Ensure that the phone’s service and account has been terminated by contacting your wireless provider’s customer support department.
2. Log out of all social networking sites, email accounts, wireless networks and applications, erasing all evidence of password information.
3. Erase contacts from your address book, delete call logs, erase messages, and remove your stored photos, videos and other media. This can be done manually; in addition, check out your phone’s manual on the device’s website to find out how to reset the device back to its factory settings.
4. Remove and store the device’s SIM/memory card in a safe place.

Since the launch of HopeLine’s national cell phone recycling and reuse program in 2001, more than eight million wireless phones have been properly disposed of in an environmentally sound way and more than 210 tons of electronic waste and batteries have been kept out of landfills.

For additional information on the HopeLine program, visit www.verizonwireless.com/hopeline