Recycling 115,369 mobile phones for gorilla conservation over a six-year period (2009-2014) at Zoos Victoria: A case study of ‘points of influence’ and mobile phone donations

Abstract

More than seven billion mobile phones are estimated to be in service globally, with more than a billion older phones likely to be retired. A major barrier to a sustainable circular economy for mobile phones is people’s hoarding of their retired phones. Old mobile phones may be refurbished for re-use or ultimately dismantled for possible extraction of elements, including ‘conflict’ metals such as coltan (containing elements tantalum and niobium), mined in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and threatening wild populations of eastern Grauer’s gorillas (Gorilla beringei graueri). Zoos Victoria cares for western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) who served as ambassadors for their Grauer’s gorilla counterparts in this community-based social marketing initiative. Through tracking of barcodes on satchels of recycled mobile phones, efficiency of ten different points of influence could be calculated for the ‘They’re Calling on You’ mobile phone recycling community campaign at Zoos Victoria in Australia. Over a six-year period (2009–2014), a total of 115,369 mobile phones were donated. The Courier Collect initiative resulted in 50,883 mobile phone donations (44% of total), followed by the Static Display at Melbourne Zoo, resulting in 29,778 mobile phone donations (26% of total). The number of phones collected for Keeper Talks (at Melbourne Zoo and Werribee Open Range Zoo) was 12,684 (11% of total), and in terms of fostering close connections between visitors and the conservation campaign, keeper talks were effective as one phone was donated for every four people attending a keeper talk at Werribee Open Range Zoo and one phone was donated for every 28 people who attended a keeper talk at Melbourne Zoo. We provide suggestions for future campaigns, so that accurate data capture can allow cost-benefit analyses to be conducted. Our results demonstrate that a conservation-based organisation, in partnership with corporate sponsors and community groups can effectively influenced people’s mobile phone recycling behavior, paving the way for international collaborations to maximize scale and impact.

Using rangers to deliver a behavior change campaign on sustainable palm oil in a UK zoo

“…[Table 6 near here] Implementing behavior change campaigns is relatively new in zoos, yet our study suggests that zoos have a unique advantage in this area because many already employ rangers who can deliver such campaigns. Although previous research on the effectiveness of rangers delivering conservation messages has been mixed (Litchfield et al, 2018;Marshall, 2016;Mony & Heimlich, 2008;Roe et al, 2015), our findings suggest that rangers may be an effective mechanism for delivering such messages, including those on complex, and often emotive, conservation topics such as palm oil. Many behavior change campaigns are based on conservation issues which the public may not be aware of, such as the bushmeat trade (Stoinski et al, 2002), or may have previously been misinformed about, such as the causes of climate change (Reynolds et al, 2010).…”

“…For example, a campaign at Zoos Victoria encouraged visitors to recycle used mobile phones to reduce the impact of mining on gorilla habitats (e.g. for coltan; Litchfield, Lowry, & Dorrian, 2018).…”

“…Research on the impact that rangers have in facilitating behavior change is limited, but they have been found to enhance learning among visitors attending exhibits with interactive displays (Marshall, 2016) and encourage specific conservation actions, such as recycling mobile phones (Litchfield et al, 2018). They also evoke conversations among visitors on conservation issues (Idema & Patrick, 2016), and enhance visitors' overall zoo experience (Doodson et al, 2019).…”

Circular economy in Latin America: A systematic literature review

“…The issue of recycling is one of the most related to CE because as issues related to the “circular economy” and “sustainable development” have been promoted worldwide, recycling, reuse, recovery are becoming popular as it ensures (Pan & Li, 2016), thus in Latin America, a number growing number of countries are preparing recycling policies that could minimize the impact of packaging and explore schemes of shared producer responsibility (Peinado, 2017), as well as has become aware of the economic value of waste as is the case of the recovery of metals from electronic waste (Işıldar, Rene, van Hullebusch, & Lens, 2018), specifically that of electronic boards by means of dissolution treatments (Tatariants et al, 2018), and as well as for the successful case of metal extraction in cell phone recycling that contributes to the campaign “They're Calling on You” in favor of gorilla conservation (Litchfield, Lowry, & Dorrian, 2018).…”

Reverse logistics network design for waste solar photovoltaic panels: A case study of New South Wales councils in Australia

“…Previously, e-waste related articles were published in the Australian context mainly on: generation estimation of e-waste by Islam and Huda (2019a, 2020b); general management practices (Islam and Huda, 2020a); evaluation of NTCRS by Dias et al (2018, 2019), Morris and Metternicht (2016) and Lodhia et al (2017); social campaigns on waste mobile phone collection (Litchfield et al, 2018); e-waste soil contamination by McGrath et al (2018) and Kiddee et al (2014); metal value quantification from e-waste by Golev and Corder (2017) and Golev et al (2016); product flow analysis on waste mobile phones (Golev et al, 2016); in-use stock estimation of electrical and electronic equipment (Zhu et al, 2017); and the role of local government in e-waste management by Davis and Herat (2010). Studies that focused on waste solar PV in the country’s context were by Mahmoudi et al (2019b) who forecasted the amount of waste solar PV generation, and the study of Salim et al (2019) investigating the drivers, barriers, and enablers to end-of-life (EoL) management of solar PV, and the comprehensive evaluation of environmental impacts and economic feasibility assessment of the treatment of the discarded PV panel by Mahmoudi et al (2020).…”