This holiday season recycle your old holiday string lights at the Houston Zoo to help save animals in the wild! Recycling helps keep unwanted items out of landfills. The fewer landfills we need for human waste, the more space there is for animals! To help protect wildlife, the Houston Zoo has placed a holiday lights recycling bin at the main entrance gate of the zoo. Only string lights will be accepted for recycle; please do not bring items such as flood lights, or light hooks, or other Christmas decorations.

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Devices the Zoo recycles: Cell phones, Smart phones, iPods or other MP3 players, iPads or other tablets, WIFI hot spots, Handheld gaming devices, GPS, Electronic accessories such as chargers, blue tooth headsets, etc. By recycling cell phones, You can help animals like gorillas, chimpanzees, and okapis by reducing the demand for new materials to be mined.

 

Cell phones and other handheld electronic devices contain a material called tantalum that is derived from the mineral coltan (columbite-tantalite). Coltan is destructively mined in central Africa, which happens to be where animals like chimpanzees, gorillas, mandrills and okapi live. When the metal is taken from these animal habitats, their homes become disrupted and these animal populations, as well as other plant and animal species in the same habitat, decrease.