The latest headlines in the mobile industry was happy news for all. Recently on NPR's "All Things Considered" I heard that all the major cell phone manufactures (LG, Nokia, Motorola, etc) agreed to an universal cell phone charger interface for the majority of cell phones by 2012. The winning technology is the Micro-USB chargers. The advantage of this agreement is twofold: first, it will reducethe number of discarded cell phone chargers in landfills and secondly, it will reduce consumers' costs when purchasing a new phone. Additionally, the elimination of the high cost of packaging, shipping, and disposing of the numerous types of chargers will save in greenhouse gases and landfill space. However, there are already some obstacles in this endeavor, the most important being that this agreement is a voluntary measure. Should we as consumers push the world association for the mobile communications industry - GSMA - to make it an obligatory requirement of being a member or contract? Another controversy has been the significant absence of a major cell phone manufacturer: Apple. Why has Apple abstained from joining in this agreement?

We want to start a discussion of these issues and to hear YOUR point of view. Please share your knowledge and opinions, you probably will know something from your own experience we don't know. For example, I have a Nokia cell phone (which I am sadly very dependent on). A benefit of having a Nokia which many non-Nokia cell phone users may not know is that Nokia cell phones beep once they are completely charged. This is a great reminder because it saves battery life as overcharging your cell phone will cause it to overheat and eventually damage your battery. Also keeping your charger continually plugged into the wall will continuously draw electricity into the adapter, which can be extremely wasteful when the majority of us who use cell phones do this.

The convenience of technology saves in human labor and time, but it also has created a number of new environmental issues. What other solutions or issues do you see in our daily use of technology and the habits we have cultivated? Is this agreement a step in the right direction? Do you know an environmentally conscience way currently of disposing of our many unused cell phone chargers? What about the energy efficiency of our cell phone chargers - is the science there? Should we expand the universal charger to other electronics - such as digital cameras, mp3 players, PDAs, my awesome Nintendo DS?

Elisabeth