While transporter rooms have yet to become a part of our daily mode of transportation, there is one item from "Star Trek" tech that has become a popular consumer electronics staple. The portable "hand held communicator" that was used by the crew of the Starship Enterprise, has made its way to our planet in the form of a cell phone.

Weaving the technology into the fabric of our society took some time. The first handheld cell phone commercially available to the US market was the Motorola DynaTAC, way back in 1983. The cost to own a DynaTAC was around four thousand dollars.

The calling plan was a whopping one dollar per minute. This made the cell phone cost prohibitive to most of the general public. Only those with financial means could afford to own it. It took more than a decade, but like most things in the technological arena, phone prices finally dropped and the cell phone emerged. It was smaller and more portable then it's first cousin the DynaTAC.

Cell towers started to sprang up all over the country and calling plan prices when from dollars to cents per minute. Communication for the masses was finally born. Today, it is hard to find anyone who is not chatting on their cell phone, or has a wireless blue-tooth headpiece attached to their ear like a "Borg" appendage.

Along with this explosion of communication technology came new products and support services like cell phone covers, calling cards, ring-tones, ear pieces, camera phones, text messaging and Internet access. Just about any function you can perform on your home computer can now be done on a cell phone that weighs less than a pound.

While both cell phones and accessories are entering the consumer market at a rapid pace, new models will replace old, and today's hot new accessories will end up in tomorrow's landfill. Cell phones and accessory devices, including headsets and batteries, provide new opportunities for a variety of green business models to emerge.

It is estimated that there are over 20 million used cell phones in households across America. While some cell phone service providers and manufacturers are championing recycling efforts, a savvy Entrepreneur might be able to find a niche in the cell phone recycling business within your own city, state, or region.

Click here to go to part two of "How To Start A Cell Phone
Recycling Business" by Robert C. Potter".

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