Frustrated with your Cell Phone? Hurl it for Fun & Fame!

Planning a trip to Finland this summer? Why not consider spending a couple of days in Punkaharju, Savonlinna?. That’s where (August 22/09) the 10th Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships (MPTWC) will be held this year, and you wouldn’t want to miss that good bit of zany Finnish family fun, now would you?

Finland, as probably the whole of ‘cyberville’ knows, is home to Nokia, one of the foremost cell phone manufacturers /suppliers on the planet, a company renowned for its regular introduction of new models to the market. Is it any wonder then, that many fashion conscious Finns make an annual habit of chucking out their old mobiles for new?

"Where Have all the Cell Phones Gone?
So where do all these hundreds of thousands of old mobiles – once, so ‘in’ – end up? Rumor has it that the bottoms of Finland’s myriad lakes are lined with the wrecks of these discarded cell phones, but I understand this is indeed, only rumor. Finland is, after all, an eco-conscious country, and its people appreciate the need to protect the beauty and pristine quality of their homeland’s lakes and forests.

The batteries of old cell phones are clearly toxic waste, but…before landing in the growing graveyard of yesterday’s high-tech ‘Top 10’ as do almost 99% in the USA, these hot little handhelds will have a final fling at fun & fame, thanks to the creative imagination of Christine Lund, managing director of Fennolingua, a small Finnish translation/interpretation company. Lund conceived the mobile phone throwing competition in 2000 as a public relations event for the opening of Fennolingua’s Savonlinna office; since that time, mobile phone throwing madness has spread to a number of other countries, including Norway, Estonia, UK, and the USA.

Does Competition Encourage Recycling? One Would Hope So!
Now, it is not entirely true that you can get rid of your old cell at the MPTWC, because in fact, competitors must use phones provided by competition organizers (why?); however, you are definitely encouraged, if you are fed up with your old cp, to chuck it in the appropriate, eco-friendly fashion – recycle it! Studies in the USA alone, suggest that over 65,000 tons of waste could be eliminated if all the people with cell phones today recycled their ‘old’ cells before purchasing new ones.

The whole notion of recycling is, I believe, becoming more acceptable to people the world over. In the USA at least, an obscenely bloated marketplace has, curiously, made consumers slaves of what should have been a really 'good thing' - choice! Well, have we taken it all too far? Perhaps in the 21st century, for our own good and the good of our planet, we need less, not more, choice!

Time to Bring on the Product that Endures?
Perhaps, the truly terrifying global recession will make wiser consumers of us all, and bring us back to an appreciation of the product that ‘lasts’, rather than the one that is ever more fashionable than the one we happen to have at the moment.

Nokia’s fourth-quarter sales in 2008 dropped 19 percent to $16.5 billion compared with the same period a year earlier with a drop in profits of 69 percent. That’s not good news for Nokia, its shareholders, or the ‘tech-shion-istas,’ but ultimately it may teach some that ‘holding on’ – though perhaps not as much fun – is healthier for us and our planet - than ‘hurling!’

Video Gem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3MYC97M4uM
by s60online
(Markku at Finnish Mobile Phone Throwing Competition)